What Is Bioleaching?

Bioleaching uses living organisms to seperate hazardous substances and materials from the main body of the electronic hardware, allowing for recovery and reuse of valuable metals.

There's More than One way to Skin a Rack

There are a wide range of techniques utilised globally to deal with e-waste, some more effective than others. E-waste recycling methods vary, from manual sorting to pyrolysis, all with their own benefits and drawbacks. One of the more recent, economically friendly and cost-effective methods comes in the form of bioleaching.

Issues Around E-Waste Recycling

A common difficulty with e-waste recycling is separating different precious metals from each other. Some techniques can salvage one precious metal at the cost of the others within the same hardware, and generally speaking, most recyclers will go for the most valuable!

Additionally, processes such as chemical leaching can use harmful and unrecyclable acids to reclaim precious metals.

Within the UK specifically, there is an issue with exporting e-waste to be dealt with elsewhere. Just 30% of e-waste from the UK is recycled here, and all PCB (printed circuit boards) materials are exported to be dealt with using often pyro and hydrometallurgical processes.

Metals such as gold are important because they are finite. In 2020 it was estimated that 7% of the world’s gold was in e-waste. This was now 5 years ago, so it is fair to assume that the percentage has increased since this point. Extracting precious metals is vital, but it is also important that this is done sustainably.

As a society, we cannot continue to solve one issue by creating another. Another example is that there are estimated to be around 25 million mobile phones discarded in the UK alone each year. Having the ability to recycle just one million of these means recovering 16,000kg of copper, 350kg of silver, 34kg of gold and 15kg of palladium.

Bioleaching

As often can be the case, it seems that one such answer to this burning question is for us to look to nature. Uncovering the ability to sustainably and reliably recover millions of kilograms worth of e-waste would be a monumental breakthrough, and this is what bioleaching aims to achieve.

Bioleaching utilises microorganisms and bacteria to extract precious metals from e-waste. Bioleaching offers an almost zero-emission alternative to other techniques, completely eliminating the feeling of one step forward, two steps back that can come with other techniques.

Currently, bioleaching is still growing into a more widely recognised practice, and there are only a few businesses that have fully adopted this form of e-waste recycling in its early stage. One such business that is looking to bring bioleaching to an industrial level is Bioscope.

Bioscope focus on the sustainable e-waste recycling of PCBs using bioleaching, and we have been fortunate enough to provide them with hardware to help develop this exciting science.

Working With Bioscope

Techbuyer has been able to become an early adopter of bioleaching through our partnership with Bioscope. We have always aimed to be at the cutting edge of e-waste recycling, and Bioscope is a fantastic example of this. We spoke to our Resource Recovery Manager, and our Head of Sustainability and Public Sector, Astrid, about bioleaching and the importance of this partnership with Bioscope.

Paul Thorogood, Resource Recovery Manager

“When I heard how Bioscope were exploring how bioleaching can be used to recover PM & CRMs from e-waste, I knew we would want to be involved as part of our commitment to emerging technologies. Being a part of the journey right from the start means we are perfectly placed to see how the technology develops overtime.”

Astrid Wynne, Head of Sustainability and Public Sector

“Techbuyer has been dedicated to furthering the Circular Economy for many years now. We achieve this by not only improving our processes for extending product life but also by supporting better processes at end of life. Many of the rarest materials in ICT are in trace amounts – amalgams and coatings – which means they are destroyed by traditional recycling technologies. We know from our work with the CEDaCI project that this can be improved with new technologies like bioleaching, but recyclers working in this area need critical mass of materials to scale up. Bioscope is a great recycling partner for Techbuyer because they are at the cutting edge of improving material recovery at end of life for IT hardware. Their success is our success; it furthers the circular economy.”

You can find out more about Bioscope here. We look forward to continuing and developing our relationship in future.