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Thursday, 31st March 2005 (4748 views)

New EU rules on the recycling of white goods could help in the recovery of huge amounts of gold.<br/> <br/>The EU Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive will call for a million tonnes a year of mobile phones, computers, games consoles and similar products to be recycled.<br/> <br/>This will mean considerable amounts of gold could be recovered, since the precious metal is commonly used for in a number of electrical products.<br/><br/>The most typical uses of gold in such products are gold based finishes on contacts and connectors, gold bonding wires in semiconductor devices and thick and thin film gold paste applications.<br/><br/>In addition, sputtered gold metallisations, gold based solder alloys and solderable gold-based coatings for printed circuit boards are see in such items.<br/><br/>Rules will come into force from January 2006 and have been introduced to prevent white good mountains, similar to those created when fridge recycling was enforced.<br/> <br/>The directive was originally planned for August this year but was postponed due to disagreement as to who should be responsible for taking back the goods and how schemes should be paid for.<br/> <br/>According to the Telegraph, 90 per cent of white goods items are currently dumped, which in turn means a lot of gold is being wasted after use.<br/> <br/>Already some goods such as games consoles have started displaying the recycling symbol to show they should be recycled and not thrown away.<br/><br/>Since gold has a relatively stable value it is often seen as a preferred choice for manufacturers as they feel confident the precious metal is the best choice for equipment based on future recycling value.<img alt="track" src="http://directnews.dehavilland.co.uk/dn.gif?feedid=196&itemid=8160942"/>

 

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