German company Aurubis, a global leader in recycling copper and precious metals, is making a killing on yesterday’s fashionable technology, which is now considered junk. And Aurubis is the only German company currently recycling smartphones and other electronic waste for their precious metal content.
Old cell phones contain raw materials that, if mined, are worth a lot of money. The following video shows two tons of smartphones being dumped into a special shredder where “the wheat is separated from the chaff” or the precious metals and other valuable parts are separated from worthless plastic.
Mining two tons of smartphones results in $11,500- $13,000 (€9,000-€10,000) on the metals markets. Two tons of recycled smartphones yield: 92 kg of copper, 38 kg of cobalt, 2.5 kg of silver and 240 grams of gold.
Aurubis also recycles close to 10,000 old computers and television sets monthly. All told, Aurubis processes about 1,000,000 tons of copper per year.
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