Narrator: This bar of gold came from the trash.
In fact, the materials inside the electronics thrown
out every year are worth an estimated $60 billion.
Jacob: There's palladium, there's tantalum, there's tin,
there's lead, there's steel.
Narrator: To extract the most precious metals,
you need brute force
or a powerful acid bath.
In many places, the scavengers who process e-waste
can't afford proper safety measures.
So now, a growing number of solo recyclers
are proving they can make money
by safely handling it in their own garages.
We could potentially recycle all of our e-waste
domestically instead of exporting it overseas.
Narrator: Wade Cawley is a dumpster diver on a mission -
to keep electronics out of landfills.
His work led him to partner with a startup
that grinds the circuit boards he collects
and recovers metals from them using a secret brew
that comes from nature.
Some of it's microbial.
Some of it's fungal.
Narrator: So how much money do solo scrappers really make?
And can they change the way the global e-waste trade works?
We went to Sydney, Australia, to find out.
Everyone knows when Wade Cawley is coming through town.
Wade: Our family nicknames it Flash, because it's red
and it's electric and it buzzes around everywhere.
Narrator: Today, he's on his way to a local repair shop
that puts aside devices it can't fix.
Wade: They didn't really have a way of recycling things,
and they really wanted to.
Narrator: Over the past decade, electronic waste
around the world has grown by at least 60%.
That's 50 million tons of trash every year.
Wade works alone, breaking down tech with drills,
screwdrivers, and ...
Wade: These are actually electric garden pruners,
but I have repurposed them to be able to cut through cable.
Narrator: Doing this work comes with risks,
but Wade takes precautions.
So I have to put my respirator on
to take these fluorescent tubes out,
because if they break, they contain mercury inside of them,
which is obviously poisonous.
Narrator: After a few minutes of work,
he finally uncovers the treasure he's after.
Wade: So this is the main circuit board,
and this is where all the gold
and silver is, in all the little black chips.
Narrator: Wade works to ensure that every part
of a device is properly handled,
even the hard-to-recycle plastic.
Recovering the copper, gold, and palladium
inside circuit boards is possible
at massive recycling facilities, but it's expensive
and requires corporations and consumers
to properly dispose of their devices.
Today, only about 9% of e-waste
in Australia is formally collected.
The US is only slightly better, at 15%.
So unwanted tech piles up on the curb waiting
for treasure hunters to find it.
Ernie: All right, there's another nice board.
I envision that small recyclers and scrappers are going
to continue to grow as a force,
both within the United States and a lot
of other developed countries.
Narrator: Ernie Petzrick is a retired Navy captain
who started scrapping in 2019.
His YouTube channel, Shark Scrapper,
is one of hundreds teaching people about this business.
Ernie: Every minute that you spend scrapping stuff down
is eating away into your margin, and sometimes,
you might only make a couple bucks an hour on something.
If you're just doing this as a one-person operation
out of the back of your truck, you'd be better off
to just go work at McDonald's.
Narrator: Scrapping doesn't really pay off
until you can invest in heavy-duty equipment
that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Jason: When you put it on one of our shaker tables,
the metals go one way, and the waste goes another way.
Narrator: Jason Gaber comes from the world
of underground mining, but now, he sells crushers
that can be used for e-waste.
Jason: E-waste is going to be the richest ore of the future.
Narrator: For many, e-scrapping remains a side hustle.
But for some of the world's poorest people,
it's the only way to make a living.
Every year, rich countries ship thousands of tons of e-waste
to places like Delhi, India, a world capital
of unregulated e-waste recycling.
Narrator: Gulzar was 14 when we talked to him in 2023.
He's one of about 50,000 people who scavenge here,
mostly from piles imported from countries
like the United States and China.
Gulzar starts his morning selling breakfast
at his father's food cart.
After school, he heads to trash piles like this one
to sort through old cellphones, computers,
and video game controllers.
Few people doing this work have access to gloves
or other safety equipment.
Narrator: And to get at the valuable metals,
many scavengers burn e-waste.
That's a problem that experts say has long-lasting impacts
on human health, including stunted growth, miscarriages,
organ damage, and bone density loss.
In 2021, India recycled a third
of the 1.5 million metric tons of e-waste it produced,
a recycling rate about twice that of North America.
But only a fraction of Indian waste was handled
by authorized recyclers.
Not to mention, the country imports an estimated 50,000
metric tons of e-waste each year.
With his business, Rekindle Me, Wade's trying
to prevent e-waste from getting shipped overseas.
Wade: It would have a really good impact globally if instead
of exporting it overseas and putting it
on the less fortunate, being able to take care
of our own waste.
Narrator: Today, Wade's dropping off a truckload
of materials he's collected at Mint Innovation,
a local startup that grinds circuit boards.
Ollie: Hey, Wade, how's it going?
Wade: Hello, good.
Ollie: Thanks for coming past.
It's a nice couple of batches here you've brought past.
Narrator: Mint pays him about $3.50 per kilo.
So today, he made about $3,500.
Ollie: How much did you bring along today, Wade?
Wade: One ton altogether.
Ollie: Typically, we're going to get something like, I don't know,
250, 300 kilos of copper could be in there
and maybe anything from 100 to 200 grams of gold.
We'll see where we get to with that.
But I've got a wee sample here of gold from the processor.
I'll give it to you now as a down payment.
Maybe you have to give it back, but.
Narrator: Mint runs electronic waste
through a liquid bath of bacteria, fungi,
and other organic materials.
Business Insider first visited Mint's pilot facility
in New Zealand in 2021.
Now, the company's scaled up with a facility here in Sydney,
Australia, that's nearly five times bigger.
So this is our first plant,
and what we are gearing up is being able
to build these in multiple cities around the world.
Narrator: It's almost entirely automated,
preventing workers from coming into direct contact
with hazardous materials.
The circuit boards heading up the two-story conveyor belt
contain about 70% plastics and 30% metals like copper,
silver, palladium, and gold.
This machine crushes them into smaller particles,
which will then be dissolved in liquid.
Ollie: We've got a big plastic tank behind me here.
It's 25,000 liters.
Narrator: It'll sit in this mixing tank for a few hours.
After that, it'll be sent over
to one of the filter presses.
Narrator: This blue fluid contains a high concentration
of copper, tin, and other less valuable metals.
Mint uses electricity to pull out the copper.
Ollie: We simply put that through a series of plates,
pass it over that.
They have electric current flowing through them,
and that plates out the copper from solution.
Narrator: Now the solution is ready to extract the gold.
That's where Mint's special sauce comes in.
Mint's team identified these tiny helpers in 2017
through a series of research trips
to places like abandoned mines
or fields with rusty equipment.
They collected species of bacteria
and fungi that evolved to bond with specific metals.
So you can see, this residual dark purple color,
that's leftover biomass that's got the gold stuck to it,
and that's formed these beautiful, purple nanoparticles.
Narrator: The purple cake will go to an off-site refiner
to be turned into something easier to recognize.
So this gold bar that I'm holding in my hands
is about 1.2, 1.3 kilos. And that's the amount of gold
that this facility is recovering each day it's in operation.
Narrator: At today's prices,
that's nearly $85,000 worth of gold.
The company says its Sydney plant could recover
more than $30 million of gold every year.
Mint also says its process has a smaller environmental
footprint compared to other forms of industrial recycling.
Ollie: And what we've created is a closed-loop system where
what actually leaves the plant is benign
and not a chemical waste stream.
Narrator: That's what helped convince Wade
to process his treasures here.
Wade: It feels amazing to see that my circuit boards
have finally made it to the right place,
and I know they're being recycled properly.
It's really cool to see it all in place now.
Narrator: Wade started collecting old electronics
when he was just a teen.
He'd store them in his mom's garage.
And I'd constantly say to Wade, do you think there's a way
of condensing this a little bit just so
that we can get out the front door?
This is a 1960s TV made in Australia.
My first old laptop or piece of technology
that kind of started my obsession with just anything vintage
and electrical and stuff like that.
Yeah, I just like to tinker on them
and see if I can get them working again.
But I think it's important as a historical standpoint
to keep things like this, because there's getting less
and less by the day of these older systems.
And yeah, they're actually worth far more than the gold
and silver inside of them, in my opinion.
Narrator: But Wade may want to consider mining some
of his own collection.
Ever heard they don't build them like they used to?
Well, it's true.
Starting in the late '90s,
many companies began using gold-plated wiring
instead of solid gold to lower costs.
For example, integrated circuits from a 1982 IBM PC
now sell for about $180 a pound.
An apple CPU, something you'd find inside a neon iMac
from 20 years later, only fetches about $4 a pound.
Most of the computer hardware is not that valuable.
There is, of course, going to be some gold, some copper,
some platinum, some palladium, but minute amounts.
Narrator: Environmental activist Jim Puckett
started the Basel Action Network, or BAN, in 1997 to monitor
and stop illegal exporting of hazardous trash like e-waste.
Jim: We need to think of handling our waste as a service
to society, because we don't want to be trashed with waste.
We don't want pollution.
Narrator: Wade says his business will continue
to earn a modest income until he can invest
in new equipment. But doing the right thing
is what keeps him going.
It motivates me in knowing that it's actually going
to be recycled and not going to landfill.
And then my hobby kind of feeds into that,
because when I get old stuff, I quite enjoy that.
So yeah, it's a really good-feeling job for me.
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