(Credit: www.bbc.com)
According to a Greenpeace forecast, the value of recyclable metals derived from China’s e-waste will double its value to approximately $24 billion (€21.3 billion) by 2030.
As revealed by Firstpost, China has been striving to “promote recycling of electronic waste” as a means of aiding the environment, lowering expenditure and lessening its “dependence on foreign resource imports.”
Now, a report by Greenpeace in collaboration with the China Association of Electronics for Technology Department indicates that “rising consumption level would take the potential economic value of recyclable metals in mobile phone and computer motherboards to 160 billion yuan ($23.9 billion/€21.2 billion) by 2030.”
However, this figure could actually be much higher, if the value of other products from electronic waste products is factored in.
Currently, China’s e-waste growth rate has an “average annual growth rate of 10.4 percent”, burgeoning from 13 million tonnes in 2018 to a projected 27.2 million tonnes in 2030.
According to research, a single tonne of discard mobile phones (without batteries) contains over 270g of gold – more than in “an average high-grade gold mine.”
