just an interesting little read http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/09/t...-of-silver-and-gold-in-phones-sold-this-year/
Yes I have often wondered if its worth scraping the gold from used credit cards and mobile phones and computers.
shhh... That's the talk around the water fountains of e-waste recyclers' offices.. shhh. One aspect of e-waste that is running hot in the background of the e-waste world is rare earths. Rare earths are used in almost everything electronics these days and future technology is pointing towards more rare earth uses. of the 17 different rare earths, some are much more valuable then the others, mostly the heavy rare earths. The white powder in fluoro tubes is a mixture of rare earths, it's what makes the light white. yttrium, terbium and europium are mostly used, especially the new style energy saving bulbs. an I-Phone contains 7 different rare earths. The only way to get the colour red in a bulb is to use terbium, no terbium, no red lights. Yttrium is $13 kg, Terbium is $615 kg and Europium is $725 kg and there's billions of lightbulbs not being recycled. I'm keen on exploring the possibilities, just can't do it myself, anyone interested in a group thing and create somewhere that everyone can send light bulbs too?
