Gold treasures are literally hidden in construction waste. According to the federal government, there is gold of around 300 kilograms in the residues of large waste incineration plants, which corresponds to the weight of 20,000 wedding rings.
Switzerland is generally very well positioned in terms of metal recycling, as the Federal Office for the Environment (Bafu) writes on its website. But of all things, one of the most valuable metals – gold – can be observed “an amazing negligence”.
Gold can also be found in mobile phones
Another source of lost gold, according to Bafu, is unused cell phones. Each device contains around 0.025 grams of the precious metal. According to estimates, there are 8 million unused mobile phones in Swiss drawers alone, with gold worth over 8 million Swiss francs in them.
In order to get this amount back, 40,000 tons of rock would have to be extracted from the ground in the gold mines. The gold can be recycled: Apple has developed a robot that disassembles disused iPhones into their individual parts in 18 seconds, after which the precious metal still has to be chemically extracted. But there is still little interest in this specific form of urban mining.
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