Urban mining is changing the way we think about waste and how we make better use of limited resources in our increasingly urbanized world. As cities continue to grow, so does the volume of waste we discard, particularly electronics, which poses significant environmental challenges. However, innovative approaches to recovering these materials – like urban mining – could help to reverse the problem.
Take a typical smartphone. Containing over 60 different elements – including precious metals like gold, silver and palladium, as well as other valuable materials like neodymium, terbium, cobalt and lithium – each one is a treasure trove in the palm of our hands. There are now billions of smartphones in circulation and by reclaiming the materials from the ones that get discarded every day, urban mining can transform this e-waste back into valuable resources and, in the process, reduce our reliance on new mining and contribute to a circular economy.
In fact, inside all electronic gadgets – and many other everyday products – are plastics, metals and elements that could be reused As we face the dual challenge of mounting waste and resource scarcity, urban mining presents an alternative path forward, and highlights the amazing potential of innovation for closing the loop – turning discarded materials back into valuable assets.
What is the meaning of urban mining?
Urban mining – sometimes also referred to as recycling or secondary production –reclaiming valuable materials from waste that’s found mainly within urban settings, such as discarded electronics, construction materials and other used consumer goods, like household appliances. Instead of sending all these things to a landfill or to be incinerated, they’re recovered, sorted and various techniques are used to extract and separate out the high-value elements. This includes metals and plastics but also minerals and rare earth elements essential for modern technology, like lithium for rechargeable batteries and neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium used in magnets for wind turbines and electric vehicle motors.
By recovering these finite materials, urban mining lessens the need for new mining operations, which often disrupt ecosystems, and consume vast amounts of energy. This practice also supports a circular economy by reusing waste and transforming cities into resource centers, delivering a sustainable supply of materials for new products and industrial applications.
Urban mining e-waste
When people talk about urban mining, they may typically think about reclaiming valuable metals from buildings and construction debris. However, there’s now a greater focus on electronic waste (e-waste) as a rich resource, particularly from items like smartphones, laptops and tablets. These devices contain a variety of precious and rare materials, such as copper, nickel and dysprosium, which are in very high demand. According to McKinsey, many minerals and metals needed in essential lower-carbon technologies will face a supply shortage by 2030. In fact, to successfully achieve net-zero globally, we will need six times more minerals in 2040 than today.
Billions of electronics are now discarded each year. An estimated 5.3 billion phones were thrown away – that’s roughly 170 phones per second – in 2022, according to the Waste Electrical Equipment Forum. –Urban mining e-waste is an essential alternative way of meeting demand, cutting landfill waste, and reducing the environmental impact of raw material extraction. Research estimates that there are around seven million unused phones with embedded gold worth US$10 million in Switzerland alone. Globally, e-waste is valued at around $91 billion, or roughly three times the value of the world’s annual silver production.
Urban mining process
Urban mining is rapidly advancing as an alternative way to reclaim and repurpose valuable materials from waste. The process relies on cutting-edge technologies to sort, dismantle, and extract key materials efficiently.
Here’s an overview of what the urban mining process involves:
- Recovery and sorting: Urban waste, including electronics and construction debris, is gathered and sorted from various sources. As part of this, an increasing number of companies now offer buy-back programs for unwanted devices.
- Disassembly: Individual items are disassembled, and materials are shredded to access valuable components and metals.
- Separation and extraction: Techniques like magnetic separation or bioleaching extract valuable metals and rare elements. Companies like Mint Innovation use bioleaching – a technique where bacteria separates precious metals from e-waste – to recover gold, which it then sells back to local businesses, such as jewelers and manufacturers.
- Purification and refinement: Recovered materials are refined to meet quality standards for reuse.
- Recycling and waste management: Refined materials are then reintroduced back into the value chain while any leftover waste is recycled or safely disposed of.
What are the benefits of urban mining?
Urban mining offers both economic and environmental benefits by reducing the growing amount of e-waste and giving companies another way of sourcing high-value metals and rare earth elements.
Compared to traditional mining, it has the potential to be a more resource-efficient and cost-effective alternative by shortening supply chains and reducing dependence on imported raw materials. This approach is crucial to the generative economy, where valuable resources flow back into production rather than becoming waste.
Environmentally, urban mining is also a win. New resource extraction takes a huge environmental toll. Though the recoverable potential of urban mining is limited to the stock of decommissioned materials, it’s a viable and valuable alternative to extracting natural resources and addresses issues like land degradation, rock waste, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, while keeping hazardous materials out of landfill.
That being said, urban mining is but one part of the transition toward a more circular economy. As Fraunhofer ISI points out, efforts to make products using less raw materials has generally led to smaller devices with thinner layers. This, in turn, decreases the potential value of recycled materials makes separating them more complex due to smaller sizes. More thoughtful manufacturing up front can lead to less opportunity for urban mining at the end of a product’s useful life, but contributes to a circular economy overall.
Dassault Systèmes supporting the circular economy
Through the power virtual twin technology, Dassault Systèmes is helping companies across all sectors find ways to reuse materials, reduce waste and improve the efficiency of their manufacturing and recycling processes.
Using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, companies can design, simulate, test and refine products with a focus on sustainability and consider from the onset how to design for disassembly, how their materials can be reused and even how urban mining can be incorporated into the supply chain.
Additionally, Dassault Systèmes’ Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) solutions allow for the environmental impact of the materials in products from their creation to end of life, pinpointing exactly which materials and processes contribute the most to waste, carbon emissions, and resource depletion. At the same time, companies can identify more sustainable sources and strategically plan for the recovery of valuable materials, such as metals and rare earth elements.
This holistic and forward-thinking approach creates a pathway toward a more sustainable future where valuable materials continually cycle back into production and urban environments become more than sources of consumption but hubs of sustainable resource recovery.
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Rebecca Lambert est journaliste et copywriter freelance basée en Grande-Bretagne.