In the podcast, Arsene interviews John Mark Jefferson, a business advisor who is passionate about sustainable IT. Jefferson talks about bioleaching, an urban mining concept used to recycle printed circuit boards (PCBs).
The Problem
Jefferson’s and his organization are looking for the best way to deal with unwanted hardware IT assets; a way that will include reuse and recycling of these assets to ensure zero percent landfills. The method should maximize the life of the assets, thereby reducing carbon footprint and supporting the planet from a sustainable perspective.
Why is it a problem worth solving?
A negative impact on the planet is measured by embodied carbon dioxide (eCO2), which is related to fossil fuels and water. If unwanted IT assets are managed through a proper matrix, then the eCO2 footprint extends over a longer period and obviates the requirement to create new IT within shorter time scales. We can extend the life of technology and recycle them, then measure the impact. For example, new gold costs much more to mine from the earth than from PCBs in laptops.
There is a hierarchy of things to do with unwanted IT assets. Reuse is better than recycle but recycle is better than landfills. The benefits of reusing and recycling can be measured in terms of water, carbon, and fossil fuels and against the UN sixth, 12th, and 13the SDGs, which cover clean water and sanitization, responsible consumption & production, and climate action, respectively.
About 60-80 percent of the eCO2 footprint of technology is through the manufacturing process: sourcing of raw materials and transportation, manufacturing assembly, and getting them to the market. If these aspects were measured, we could minimize negative impacts on the planet and maximize positive impacts through the reduction of carbon footprint, water consumption, and fossil fuel use.
PCBs should be treated as hazardous waste. Many organizations deconstruct them through thermal and non-thermal means, both of which are unfriendly to the environment.
The Solution: Bioleaching
Jefferson recommends bioleaching as the best method to recycle PCBs. It involves bacteria breaking down the board or the glue that holds metal to the boards and extracting the rare metals. For mobile phones, copper is the most dominant metal. Others include palladium, platinum, and gold. In essence, there is more gold in a tone of mobile phones than a ton of gold ore. Therefore, there is value in using bioleaching in urban mining. Moreover, you’d need 17,900 kilograms of carbon to extract one kilogram of gold from a gold ore compared to just 397 kilograms of carbon that bioleaching would require. Therefore, bioleaching makes both commercial and environmental sense.
Jefferson’s project has three phases: proof of concepts phase, the piloting, mass production. The first phase was a joint venture between a commercial entity, a university and the UK government came in for funding. The second phase involves tests where clients have provided a couple of boards. The tests have shown that some manufacturers have better quality PCPs than others.