A UK based company is spending $340M on a new e-waste recycling plant in the USA capable of retrieving valuable metals like copper from discarded electronics.
Exurban will create the “world’s first zero waste smelter refinery” to offer a domestic, low carbon, circular solution to the global challenge of e-waste.
The e-waste problem is huge and growing. Every year millions of tons of e-waste are buried in landfill or shipped overseas, often to the developing world, where poorly regulated disposal has appalling consequences for health and the environment.
The new 77 acre plant in Indiana will refine precious and base metals like copper, gold and silver from discarded mobile phones, computers, circuit boards and televisions into purified products for sale into domestic markets. The plant is expected to see a total feedstock capacity of 45,000 metric tons per year.
Producing metal from scrap is significantly less energy intensive than mining and smelting.
Jean-Paul Deco, co-founder of the U.S. subsidiary of Exurban, told the media the smelter and refinery will use both pyrometallurgical and hydrometalurcial processes to recover metals that won’t require export for further purification.
“We’ll be producing all the way through to refined products. We won’t have any intermediate products,” Deco was reported as saying.
Focussing initially on the UK and USA, with key supply partnerships from leading recycling companies, we have the ambition to expand around the world.
Exurban media release: https://www.exurban.co.uk/news/13494/exurban-to-build-the-worlds-first-zero-waste-smelter-to-recycle-ewaste