Your old phone is a veritable gold mine
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- E-waste is more than phones and laptops. There’s gold, silver, copper, and lots of other precious metals powering your electronics, and that makes for some valuable “e-waste”. And a recent study proposed that it’s now more cost-effective to dig minerals out of old electronics than out of the Earth. We crack open some old tech to see where these metals are hiding, and find out just how hard it is to reclaim them safely.
Clarification: in citing India, China, and South Africa as suffering from growing e-waste problems, we didn’t mention that those countries are also producing record amounts of their own e-waste, in addition to anything being imported from other countries. E-waste from all sources is on the rise, forcing governments to figure out how to deal with it safely and efficiently.
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What will happen to all our electronics if gold and other rare metals are depleted?
Please if you refer to a paper put a link below the video. for the love of science.
Asteroids and other moons
There is a lot of gold in the earth, like a lot
it happens only in USA. If you are from EU you can do it with calm mind. USA government does not care about environment. Same as China or India.
I think he's referring to the increased difficulty of mining gold and other precious metals.
2018: Your old phone is a veritable gold mine
2019: The dark side of electronic waste recycling
I know. 😭
Wtaf
Why did I think I was getting a "how to" video.
Your not alone.
Well... it kinda is a _"how to"_ video.
Yet, I was hoping for an other type as well...
true...here I was thinking how I was going to make extra money by taking apart my old electronic devices.
Same here ... I was like hmm I have 10 phones laying there ... until I went through the whole video
Go look for it on Cody's lab "precious metals refining"
The PS1, Newton and iBook we used in the video are safe and sound. Don't panic. - Cory
Verge Science Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh thank god
Ayy
thank god
And the walkman??
Those would have been a very solid reason for a dislike! This comment saved it xD
Shit more like gather that stuff up and put it on eBay. Worth more there then the gold in them.
brian hilligoss a lot of people don't know the selling power for small electronics on ebay. They usually don't want to deal with selling and shipping the items also
@@rubyynn stupid
+Beach Looking Guy, and fees....
@@DanRossGraphics it's still a profit. recycling it has fees from the gas used to get to the drop-off and back.
There are other sites, like Olio. Also one can just throw it into box , find closest garage sale, go there and donate to soneone who can actually sell it. Also other way round - check sites like olio, ebay, craigslist and find someone who sells loads of old stuff from category You have. Then just contact this person and ask if they do not want your stuff.
There are also places with hobbyists who need old equip to salvage components from, look up for places like makerspaces.
So, you told me that recycled electronics get sent to other countries and ruin their environment, but you still want me to recycle?
Exactly, instead of throwing it in the recycling, find an e-waste facility near you and drop it off so it doesn't get thrown into the landfill.
"the US has problems with E-waste being shipped to developing countries and we can't process is properly right now so dig through you house and get rid of all of it so it does exactly what we just stated is a problem." because that makes sense?
I was just thinking he should be saying, hang on to your old electronics until a proper bill calls for the devices not to go to a 3rd world country.
And then the countries get blamed for pollution and get a tax.
@@Funkgun a bill? how about the corrupt leaders of those third world countries actually prohibiting the importation of E-waste? you must be liberal-democrat....force people in the bad U.S. to do the right things not the politicians in other countries doing their job.
No, not the PlayStation. It's a legendary device. 😭😭😭
If you garbage it now, you potentially can lost a thousands because the older these devices get the more is their value. We can see this today with first iPhones, they cost thousands if in pristine condition.
Mine still works!
PC master race here. Why would you keep that old crappy machine?
+marceelino Nostalgia obviously. An emulator doesn't have the feeling of an old school console.
You do NOT represent the PC master race impostor.
One does nor simply recycle a PlayStation1
Andrei Laza so true.
As soon as i saw i thou the same, like hello?
One does or simply recycle?
I know this question boils down to perplexing human emotions domain, but, seriously humans need to be Spock sometimes and let go of emotions and be altruistic in nature for everyone's, especially for human's benefits.
Get that ps1 out of the box! Disgraceful
Repair, Reuse and only then Recycle. Recycling should be the last option.
Claire Blackshaw why would you reuse old tech from the 90s that are completely obsolete
juilan Rhodes In a lot of cases, as long as it works, it still has a purpose for someone
Obsolete for most, not all
Reusing means you don't need to buy more stuff. Buying more stuff will only fuel the cycle of waste.
juilan Rhodes hey hey, there was a Playstation 1! I'd be happy to have it.
Dominik Seljan We've still got one in our house!
I Scrap e-Waste as a business in Florida. All of the material is valuable. I waste nothing. Everything gets separated. Metal gets melted, Plastic and Glass go to the recycler. Circuit boards are stripped, and the resulting materials are sorted. Even Precious Metal extraction can be done with safer methods that use electricity instead of acids. The plastics can be burned for energy if the fumes are trapped and scrubbed. Or they can be pyrolized and used for other materials. All of that material is valuable. It is important to sort like materials together and process them correctly. Unfortunately, it is definitely minimum-wage work.
Can't we reuse the circuit boards to make something useful instead of stripping them? They are intricately designed..
That ps1 is vintage....how dare u
I didn't like the fact wood was considered a waste stream. Shred it to mix with greens to create rich compost for the rapid loss in soils the world is facing. Absolutely mental to me how little people actually compost natural materials. Plastics etc shouldn't exist as they have only one option but to end up in a dump pile or in rivers and oceans
I think AI is needed to take control of these processes, humans doesn't have the attention span to carry through with stuff like this, so making a automated process and a AI to collect e-waste and recycle them would help.
Of course you make sure that AIs don't think it's better to 'recycle' humans.
Plastic is also recyclable
Wood in these electronics is likely heavily chemically treated tho?
Plastics are made out of stuff on earth, lol so they probably should exist and would eventually they are actually genius, we wouldn't be as far as we are today if we didn't have plastic. Say goodbye to literally almost everything
"Old electronics are a gold mine, be sure to throw them out"
Highly suggestive title that wasn’t actually fulfilled
First telling people their waste destroys the lives of others, then encouraging them to make some more garbage! What exactly is the point you're making in this video?
Georgi Atanasov Encouraging to recycle is much more productive than encouraging to throw in a landfill!
. . . but we don't recycle, not really. Nine times out of ten, it is headed to India. So, I'm keeping my small heap until I die. After that, I can't do anything.
We are getting a lot better at recycling
Never knew my old iPhone or tv was made of wood. Here I thought those where smart devices not furniture
It is time to pass laws making the companies that manufacture these electronics responsible for taking it all back.
Note: One ton of cell phones is over 8,000 for the 11 or so oz of gold and hundreds of pounds of toxic waste after your time, sweat, and expenses. How many hours just to touch 8 thousand things just once and drop them let alone dissemble and process them. The other waste has way less gold. And mining gold is a price issue, not plenty of gold to sell issue. Copper is a lot more dire.
I'm an electrical engineer and just by looking at an e waste is mouthwatering. There's so much electrical stuff in there I want to salvage!!
Nice video but i didnt like the title because you never actually show the process of digging thoes metals by yourself. The same as other videos
Agreed Santiago, The title is misleading.
Santiago Bejarano It's toxic and very hazardous to do so. Plenty of places will pay you for your used electronics if you know where to look.
Seriously ...? It's a gold mine is a euphemism in English. It means that something contains a large amount of something valuable, or is in itself valuable. It doesn't mean you are literally mining for something,
making every viewers fool
How can the classic PlayStation be an electronic waste? How dare you!
Ale N64 is better
No! the saturn is the definite console of that generation! How dare you not worship our god SONIC
hyppu
Sega Megadrive 16-bit...
How dare you! ( with your modern fancy pantsy Sega Saturn )
But it is waste on of the biggest one
Sounds like I should hold onto all my electronics...
Here in India we repair phones as much as possible reason is that people don't have enough money but at least it's good for environment . In Developed countries people replace electronic to buy newer version or updated devices
I wish more people here in the United States would fix their old electronics instead of being wasteful and throwing them away. you wouldn't believe what people throw away here, I go to e-waste bins and take stuff out for myself, and I once got a Galaxy s9 and an iPhone 8 plus all in one go. The Galaxy s9 is now my main phone, it's 64gb unlocked and flawless condition.
Murfee 123
Where might you be dinding these e-waste bins please!!?!?
Repair is better than recycling, if repair can't help then recycle. The longer you use a device the longer you keep those other materials like fiberglass out of landfills. Better for the environment.
"Ripped apart, smashed into tiny little pieces, shredded"
*sobs uncontrollably* 😭
Verge you'll be shocked. Plastic actually comes from tree.
Mr BrightSide no IT doesnt
The android cat 2009 yes it does. You're talking to a guy who work in a processing plant where all the latex comes from. Main ingredient to plastic.
You know what polycarbonate is made in a factory and plastic is POLLUTION!!!!!!!
Keep up the good work guys
Old rundown telephones are a goldmine and how benevolent it is that there are companies who help the public get rid of their old goldmines.
Oh wow, so if I literally have a TON of old phones, I can get a lot of gold out of them! Sweet!
Tell us how to extract gold from our electronics. I'm onboard
D18rulez it’s not worth it unless you have A LOT e waste.
D18rulez
Just go see Cody at Codys Lab channel 😂👍
so basically nothing ever get truly recycled
So first you say dont do it, but then you finish with go ahead and do it. Makes perfect sense.
A year later and this is still a serious problem and growing industry
Hi Verge Science, kindly provide the source for the statement that eWaste from the US makes its way to South Africa (my country).
thanks.
Hi Gola, the UN released a report a few years back that highlighted the surge in e-waste that South Africa was facing, much of it from increased consumption of electronics within South Africa. That study is summarized here:
unu.edu/media-relations/releases/urgent-need-to-prepare-developing-countries-for-surge-in-e-wastes-un.html
Additionally, there have been reports of e-waste improperly finding its way from the US to other countries including South Africa - there are a number of watchdog orgs that track this. It's wayyyy too easy for big companies or even philanthropic initiatives to lose track of bits and pieces of their "recycling supply chain". Here's one of the case studies citing South Africa:
archive.ban.org/ban_news/2009/090610_epa_files_legal_action.html
That being said, we didn't mean to imply that all of South Africa's e-waste was arriving from the US. We're adding a clarification in the video description to reflect this. Thanks for checking in with us on that!
Verge Science thanks for the informative reply.
Yeah, South Africa is developed all right.
@@VergeScience oh, well, if it's a report from the UN it HAS to be nothing but the golden truth. Too bad they're one of the most corrupt organizations on the planet, only second to their number one source of funding...the U.S. Government.
@@douglasgoldstein8990 Wow, thanks for contributing so much to this conversation with all your sources and information!!!
Why did you leave out the cost comparison of mining from e-waste compared to gold mining?
As an Apple collector I can’t even think of giving one of my baby’s there...
Ok, I’m going to find some gold now
If i were you, i would still use every thing and not "recycle" them for gold, tech is vey valuable.
People who collect old electronics: *nervous sweating*
Linus went to a place in Taiwan I think, to a factory that deals with said materials. Even the rags they used to wipe down circuit boards where collected, washed, and the amount of metal collected was mind blowing. Even a rag, turns into 100,000 rags and so does the precious materials
In Malaysia we usually sell old items and people would like to buy it, so not much of waste :D
i think i found a new hobby
mining for gold in e waste
dont you dare put that playstation in the same category as a used iphone
Seems like if e-waste has such a high potential value, consumers ought to be able to get a little compensation for turning electronics in, as in states like California, Hawaii, and Maine that pay you for recycling your beverage containers.
The colossal amount of e-waste should add up to a economically significant portion of precious metals. With a large enough transcontinental investment and operation, it should be doable to notably lower total costs of electronic production, as the resources will be more readily available.
By that standpoint, recycling eWaste really is a socioeconomical matter that can benefit all sides with enough sacrifice.
I thought it was everything that ended up in the desktop recycle bin
Will they give my gold back to me?
How dare you touch these relics ?
Or you go the alternative route. One that doesn't require the product to be processed or expose people to toxic waste: Sell it to someone who wants it. It might to hard to find a buyer for an ancient phone or TV, but that Apple laptop and PlayStation would definitely have a buyer out there. I have very little e-waste in my apartment because I always sell any electronics that I don't want anymore. The bonus about selling quickly is the newer the item is, the higher the price you'll get for it.
That shredding to "recycle" is what is causing all seafood to be contaminated with microplastics that can't ever be cleaned up.
I see an iBook clamshell… that’s not trash!!!
Working it's $100+ on Ebay... and going up.
Good video, but it kinda falls short.
First of all, harvesting gold from electronics only makes sense if you ignore the extremely toxic and dangerous chemicals you have to use in order to extract an extremely tiny bit of gold and rare materials in each piece of electronic.
To give an idea, you can take 311 grams of gold... out of a ton, or 10000 smartphones.
Half that ammount of gold for 200 laptops.
Your old phones can be considered veritable gold mines at the most strict sense - you need a ton of material to receive and extremely toxic and harsh chemical process to extract miniscule ammounts of gold. You actually can get more gold per ton of material out of electronics compared to mining, but the process and chemicals needed are all worse than even regular mining. So, I dunno how that study mentioned was produced, but no, it still does not make sense to take gold out of electronics compared to regular mining.
Then you consider man hours, extremely toxic and expensive chemicals, a super complex process and the fact that you'll end up with almost the same final ammount of trash that is now also toxic requiring special disposing processes.... it makes zero sense to do it on small to medium scale. At big scale it's not happening because of the potential ecological disaster it could produce. If it could be done in a profitable way, companies would be doing if for decades now. This is the type of thing that absolutely needs governmental interference, incentives, regulation, laws to support and whatnot. Which is pretty hard to do when you have a backwards thinking government.
The trash is exported and then part of it mined in a similar way that some people go eat and try to find something in landfills to profit from. Extremely poor people who are paid almost nothing for their work and are already trapped in hellish conditions. By US standards, the places that this is happening in those countries - China, India and whatnot, would be all considered superfund sites. People in those places will rarely live past their 30s.
The better way for old electronics and broken ones is exactly not to toss them into the garbage or send it to recycling centers. If you can fix it, do it and keep using for as long as possible. If you can't, try to sell it or give it up to someone who can. Depending on what it is, you can even sell or give it up to collectors. It's still better for it to become a museum piece or something like that than being discarded.
The best way to deal with this is to extend the life of electronics for as long as possible, then when it's completely broken let useful parts of it be harvested and put to use, and then finally when there is nothing that can be used there anymore, only then it goes to recycling. Recycling and trash are last case scenarios.
Optimal scenario given current limitations is that end consumers with no knowledge or will to fix electronics or make use of parts should not be throwing that stuff in the trash... it should go through a long process of trying to make use of everything in it until it has to go to the trash because nothing there can be used for anything.
For smartphones, laptops and desktops, see if you can find local repair shops that can make use of parts. Maker spaces might also accept it depending on what it is. Let them discard the stuff if they can't make use of it.
So basically we have a gold mines in our closets, basements and attics...ssSpectacular!
Recycling should always be the last option when it comes to things you buy. Reducing the amount you buy and reusing the older stuff you have/getting your old stuff that you don't want on the second hand market is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better for the planet than recycling. Recycling is still important though because, with the necessary infrastructure, recycling could mean an end to mining materials from the Earth
Verge: These *MOUNTAINS* of e-waste are poisoning the land and water and children!!!
Also Verge: But recycle your e-waste anyway.
Are they going to pay me for my "E waste" with gold in it? Would it be worth my time?
"The stuff that just needs to be thrown into the waste stream like plastic and wood" I work in a plastics factory and last time I checked it was recyclable. 🤔
So I should give all my valuable old electronics to a company for free so they can break then down for profit?
@0:47 I remember having problems closing my ps1 just like that
Calling the PS1 "E-Waste" Well.... i was about to subscribe.....
Why should I recycle? What's in it for me? I don't get any of that gold, just giving it away.
I thought gold in the title was data in them
There’s more gold in a ton of phones then there is in a ton of gold ore
I thought I was gonna be able to get a bunch of gold from my old electronics 😞
Only a third of a gram out of a kilo of old phones. That's maybe $20 worth of gold, if you're lucky.
Why sending people in mines when you can find gold in phones and shits :o
Why isn't the plastic and wood also being recycled despite plastic and wood both being recyclable, wood is recyclable like paper and cardboard while plastic is recyclable due its low meting point and is able to go through any plastic recycling process. All the materials should be recyclable.
China called, and said they don't want your wastes.
dra6o0n
Is OK, they've figured it out, they're shipping it back out to the world reformed into "Wish" products.
👍
Consoles I think are the one of the few electronics that makes sense to keep since modern consoles don't have full backwards compatibility like the PC and certainly not all of the old games are playable on new platforms.
The message they forgot to drive home is stop buying new tv's/laptops every year because of the massive environmental impact.
in Indonesia, we don't know or maybe don't have a place to recycle electronics. worse, many people just burn all the plastics and other waste into the open air which also result in bad air condition. Even the official recycling guys are picky about our waste (pemulung). That includes the problem for electronics which is increasing so rapidly.
There's Gold In Them Thar Electronics!
Somehow, The Verge is better at computer disassembly than it is at computer assembly...
E-waste recycling is a very important topic, it should be covered more.
Give it to Apple if it’s smaller than a large laptop.
Is it waste if I have it plugged in, but I haven't used it in 3 years?
Alternatively, you can mine BitCoin with those devices
So how do you separate the gold ?
E-waste outlets should buy electronics from us, I bet plenty will hand them in with incentives.
I don’t understand why we don’t have better recycling systems
DONT U DARE THROW THAT PS1 OUT
Maybe Space Centers should take an initiative to dispose off the waste towards the sun in the minimal budget. Any views guys?
I'm blown away at how much of the info in this video is completely incorrect.
Keep in mind, though, that salvage companies have found that the components in the e-waste have been found to be more valuable than the metals in them.
wait a sec. DAD GIVE ME YOUR PHONE I WILL DIG SOME GOLD WHICH IS 56 EURO PER GRAM
Considering you need 1 ton to get around 9000 USD of gold, the cost of recycling is way higher than what you get for it. At least at an individual level is not worth.
I thought you were going to show me how to separate the precious metals from the board.
Those mobile golds are dug from the earth. So earth has more gold.
It hurts me when I see them put the ps1 in that box
Or maybe you could sell most of those items as they're very valuable to collectors.
I laughed when he pulled ram out from under his bed, then I remembered i jammed a stick under my bathroom door to get a good air flow in the house.
So if I get enough phones, I'll just rip them apart, take out the gold, and be *RICH!* 💸
There is normally more copper than gold in most electronics.
But silver is a better conductor for electricity than both.
"Gold doesn't corrode very easily". Yea like not at all
Why would I recycle my E wast when I can just sell the precious metals myself?
Found this video don't want you to collect gold yourself out of electronics
Keep your old phones, jailbreak them, and sell them on the black market.
Now just imagine finding a nokia and trying to get out the gold
so although e-waste ends up polluting developing countries you still tell us to recycle... Great morals!
Damn; I thought this was gonna teach me how to take those metals out and sell them.
Lets start mining asteroids and find more precious metals. Send out Thousands of Drones to collect them.