There’s gold trapped in your iPhone – and chemists have found a safe new way to extract it

ADELAIDE (AUSTRALIA): (Jun 29) In 2022, humans produced an estimated 62 million tonnes of electronic waste – enough to fill more than 1.5 million garbage trucks. This was up 82 per cent from 2010 and is expected to rise to 82 million tonnes in 2030.

This e-waste includes old laptops and phones, which contain precious materials such as gold. Less than one quarter of it is properly collected and recycled. But a new technique colleagues and I have developed to safely and sustainably extract gold from e-waste could help change that.

Our new gold-extraction technique, which we describe in a new paper published today in Nature Sustainability, could also make small-scale gold mining less poisonous for people – and the planet.