Taiwanese recycling centre set to tackle electronic waste
Monday, March 4, 2013 - 11:40:51
Hundreds of millions of gadgets are thrown away each year around the world, with only a small proportion actually ending up at recycling facilities that are able to truly handle this electronic waste in a sustainable and responsible way.
Taiwan is home to some top tech firms, including smartphone manufacturer HTC, so its population is pretty savvy when it comes to gadgets and gizmos.
Now BBC news reports that the country is hoping to make better use of the e-waste that it generates, through the construction of a new recycling facility in the capital of Taipei.
Not only will the centre be able to take old smartphones, computers and other gadgets to extract the various precious materials from them to be reused, but it will also be built entirely from recycled products.
Spokesperson, Arthur Huang, said that the facility will be the most advanced and green building of its type in the world.
The building will be created using a number of materials produced as a result of recycling electronics. The walls, for example, will be fashioned from carbon fibre that is produced as a result of reconstituting old motherboards from PCs.
Meanwhile, the ceilings of the plant will be based on waste plastics produced during the manufacture of DVDs and CDs.
There are large amounts of precious minerals and metals in our smartphones and computers, with one representative saying that 10,000 PC motherboards have around 2KG of gold in them. That means that recycling e-waste is not only environmentally sensible, but economically rewarding.
Taiwan is a relatively small nation, but it pumps out more electronics per capita than any country on the planet. This means it really needs the backing of a solid e-waste recycling infrastructure, to avoid harming the environment.
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