Have you ever imagined that you can make use of the waste to produce something?
The video demonstrated how five million units of electronic waste being disposed of annually is simultaneously giving away HK$600 million worth of precious metals if it was all recycled in a sustainable manner. The Environment Bureau should be blamed for losing hold of the responsibility of appropriate e-waste treatment, letting exporters do the dirty job, as well as the loss of huge potential business opportunities arising from extracting precious metals such as gold, silver, copper, all going down the drain for years!
Why not making use of the waste, and turn them to gold!
The leading recycler, Multiresource Technology Inc introduced their best practice of recycling electronic waste and the “turn waste to gold” facilities and processing lines. It was revealed that recycling 20,000 computer units can produce 1kg of gold, 1.5 kgs of pure silver and 3,500 kgs of copper. One kilogram of gold is worth HK$0.28 million at current market rates, and the value of gold alone that the company gained through recycling amounted to over HK$100 million a year, showing the value in electronic waste.
This maybe be time intensive, it is not an easy task to convince people to recycle their waste, especially computers. Computers are quite heavy and is difficult for people to carry their own computers to the recycle station for recycle. The benefits of social media may not work out when people do not have any interest in the product or service. In this case, it is not successful as most of the people tend not to care much about the waste, where will they go after throwing them away, or what will they be after the recycling process.
Sally Wong ^ ^
