UNIT 4

1	As newer and more powerful cell phones are brought onto the market, old cell phones often end up being thrown away.  Although large appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioners are usually recycled, so-called e-waste \\ cell phones, computers and other small gadgets \\ often ends up in the trash.
2	This large accumulation of e-waste has led to the birth of a new industry, urban mining.  Urban mining aims to reclaim or recover precious metals and rare earth minerals from old worn-out electronic goods, turning trash into treasure.  Recently, in Japan, a campaign to recycle old cell phones resulted in 577,000 cell phones being collected in just 100 days.  These phones yielded 22 kilograms of gold, 79 kilograms of silver, 2 kilograms of palladium and over 5 tons of copper.
3	Urban mining is a growth industry around the world.  In California since the state passed a law to encourage recycling, nearly 1 billion pounds of e-waste have been processed.  California now has 60 recyclers and 600 e-waste collectors.  Seeing the success of the California law, 24 other states in the United States have passed e-waste laws.  These laws have helped the urban mining industry grow.  John Shegerian, the CEO of Electronic Recyclers International says his company now processes 120 million pounds of e-waste a year.
4	Another driving force behind the growth of urban mining is the instability and uncertainty in the global supply of precious metals and rare earth minerals.  China supplies 97% of the worldfs rare earth minerals.  However China has recently moved to limit these exports.  As a result people have begun to look for other sources for these rare earth minerals.
5	Urban mining is not without its drawbacks.  First of all, recovering materials from e-waste is expensive and requires a tremendous amount of energy.  In addition, a lot of e-waste is sent to third world countries where people are forced to work in unsafe working conditions.  Since e-waste can be toxic, it can be dangerous for both the workers and the surrounding environment.
6	What is needed is responsible urban mining.  Governments need to pass laws to increase safety.  Secondly, consumers need to pay for their used products to be recycled in a safe and responsible way.  Urban mining is expensive but if itfs done properly it will continue to be a growing industry for years to come.