# Will the E-waste vanish someday? soon?



## yossarian (Feb 25, 2013)

Obviously not.

what I mean is, as old stockpiles of electronic waste get processed, eventually we will reach a state of equilibrium where global production of electronics matches end of life destruction and processing.
But will the ever decreasing size of electronics steadily reduce the amount of E-waste produced? or will increases in global demand outpace the reduction in size and gross tonnage that is produced?

It seems to me that all the young guys interested in starting E-waste scrapping businesses are entering what is essentially a dying industry (maybe not yet but at some point)

And even if the total amount of electronics dose increase for the time being. The intrinsic value must be declining, right? I mean, is a ton of smartphones even close to the value of a ton of old 486's? or even pentium 4 PCs?

Tell me what you think. is my doom and gloom prediction correct?

(This is more of a theoretical, or academic discussion, so mods, If I am in the wrong place, would you be kind enough to move it?)


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## NobleMetalWorks (Feb 25, 2013)

I am sitting in the waiting room at the hospital as I write this. Oddly enough they seem to be removing a lot of older equipment to make room for newer equipment, I overheard them talking about it and asked. Of course they thought I was asking because of the length of time it's taking for them to take care of me, but I'm more interested on where it is going and who I can purchase it off of.

My point is that there is a constant steady stream of e-waste right now, far more than you can even imagine. In the US we only process between 17%-21% of our e-waste depending on which sources you go by. For years and years we have been dumping e-waste into landfills, so you have decades and decades worth in the ground, if ever we actually ran out of material above ground, I'm sure someone will figure out a way to mine it in the ground where we put it.

But also think about this fact. China has BILLIONS of people who all want cell phones, TVs, computers, third world countries are demanding the same quality of living that we have enjoyed for years. They all also need better health care, and industry is moving into these countries at a rate that if it continues will over shadow our own production in the next few years.

Because people use, and toss, their electronics for newer and better ones, because Moor's law dictates every 18 months computers double in power, because everyone is on this use and throwaway train, and have been so for so long, there will never be and end to e-waste, it might become more competitive, but there will never be an end. 

Scott


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## kkmonte (Feb 25, 2013)

yossarian said:


> Obviously not.
> 
> what I mean is, as old stockpiles of electronic waste get processed, eventually we will reach a state of equilibrium where global production of electronics matches end of life destruction and processing.
> But will the ever decreasing size of electronics steadily reduce the amount of E-waste produced? or will increases in global demand outpace the reduction in size and gross tonnage that is produced?
> ...




Kind of like going into the VCR/DVD Video rental business. It's going to be ending at some point, just not sure how long.


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## solar_plasma (Mar 4, 2013)

Dont forget, there waits much more gold in the oceans salt water for us to find a smart procedure to get it out, than there is gold in the Earth's crust! :lol:


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## goldsilverpro (Mar 4, 2013)

solar_plasma said:


> Dont forget, there waits much more gold in the oceans salt water for us to find a smart procedure to get it out, than there is gold in the Earth's crust! :lol:


It's there for sure. Once you find a profitable method to get it out, let us know. As I understand, Hitler wasted lots of money trying to do it. On average, it takes over 600 million gallons to get an ounce.


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## solar_plasma (Mar 5, 2013)

That's easy, you only have to wait until the sun becomes a red giant, put as many electrodes as you have into the melted salt of the former oceans using solar energy for electrolysis, take all the recovered metal (mostly sodium) and let it react with the now melted liquid water on the moon Europa (slowly! dont blow the moon! Use safety glasses and gloves!) and gain the undissolved heavy metals for further refining. Simple. Yields 6.000.000 t gold.


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## joshh (Mar 5, 2013)

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/polytron-unveils-clear-cell-phone/

look at this almost no gold at all technology is changing so fast


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## Geo (Mar 6, 2013)

goldsilverpro said:


> It's there for sure. Once you find a profitable method to get it out, let us know. As I understand, Hitler wasted lots of money trying to do it. On average, it takes over 600 million gallons to get an ounce.



Poe can do it. he said he has a proprietary filter system that just sits there and as the water passes over it, it just sucks up the gold. :lol:


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## kurt (Mar 6, 2013)

:lol: Thats funny Geo - it was just what I thought when I read GSPs post --- ask Dr Poe :roll: 

Kurt


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## Marcel (Mar 6, 2013)

> Will the E-waste vanish someday? soon?



I am absolutly convinced that this is the case!

IT electronics came in like a wave in the 1980s-1990s and now we see the wave rolling back. The huge mass of e-waste may still be yet to come but it will end in a not to near future.
There are multiple factors that will cause this, miniaturisation is one, the high costs for the PMs is another. So if you want to benefit from this scenario - DO IT NOW!
IT is going to transfer from hardware to software, from software to services (hardddisk to cloud f.i) 
IT is not about transistors, it is all about information. That information can be stored and processed in many ways.
It is different with energy electronics. Here we nedd old school copperwire, gold and silver contacts aso. This will not change so fast. Processing information without physical components is an ultimate goal of the IT and all forces are working towards reducing hardware and therefore e-waste.
In future we will see even higher integrated products that will make smartphones look as large as like freezers. We will wear or IT equipment and one day carry it inside our body. This is not SF, it is just the logical consequence.
Until then we still have years to come where we can deal with huge amounts of e-waste, so I don´t worry about that for the near future.


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## solar_plasma (Mar 7, 2013)

Some metals will be become very rare, new technologies will need the use of other elements. Maybe some rare metals will become more expensive than gold. We will find new ways to gain them from spendt technology. And we are skilled in find what,what is worth to store in the last corner of the garage, - like we did before and the scraps from the 90's now are gems to us. There will always come new gold rushes. The large deponies will become a source for bigger companies to gain precious metals. And if nothing helps we can digg metals from ores again or from meteorites. Maybe thoughit willnever again become as easy as now.


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## GOLDbuyerCA (Mar 11, 2013)

*Not really* e waste will contain lesser amounts of PMs' but good finds will still be found for many years on out. A case in point, March 9th. was a Big Radio Ham swapmeet, in Puyallup, note
photo of previous swapmeet :> http://sphotos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/205021_10150175192837340_8311544_o.jpg i have some photo of scrounging, many never used green, and blue 
connectors with pre 75 plating. many gold plated Ic's dozens of gold sockets, wire wrap, n such, good fun, need a keen eye, n know your stuff. i did 250 cash in hand, n netted 250 lbs plus, of
good old junk electronics, silver, palladium n gold scrap, Get to a Ham Fest, n get lucky, challenge, negotiate, wave cash, n repeat to the same seller in half an hour or so,


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## ilikesilver (Mar 28, 2013)

Im gonna say no on this topic, i was doing some research recently and came across this website, very informative. Even though we may run out of the GREAT finds, they will always use PMs to make stuff with, you may have to work a little harder or come up with different ideas to extract the PMs but it will be out there for years to come. check this out.

http://www.silverinstitute.org/site/silver-in-industry/electronic/


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## samuel-a (Mar 31, 2013)

goldsilverpro said:


> solar_plasma said:
> 
> 
> > Dont forget, there waits much more gold in the oceans salt water for us to find a smart procedure to get it out, than there is gold in the Earth's crust! :lol:
> ...



Sounds good Chris,
There's about 343423668428484 million gallons in the world's oceans.
So that turns out 572372780714 TOz or 17800793.48 metric tons of gold or 915,796 Billion dollars worth. 


Now where did i leave my free energy diy book...


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## artart47 (Mar 31, 2013)

Hi everyone!
funny, when you mension dr. poe. I had the thought about the company who posted here about their fabric that selectivly attracts pm's from solution. per-haps he read about that product?
I was just wondering if someone experimented with just tying some peices of that product behind a cargo ship for a feww months and dragging it around the world a few times in the sea water to see what you catch. pm's, sea salt....?
artart47


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## butcher (Mar 31, 2013)

Maybe that carbon rag drug behind that big boat (ship), trying to collect a few grains of gold, would catch a big fish which seen it like a lure, then I think, then you would have something to brag about, and make a good meal out of that big fish.

There is plenty more gold in the earth, my belief is in this country we have only scratched the surface, but the real mother load is deeper down, most of the gold mines in this country did not run out of gold, miners just found easier pickings elsewhere, or the price of labor was too high, or you could make better money working at some other job, not enough manpower during wars, or our government shut down gold mining as other metals were more important to fight the war or supply metals essential to war, after the war the price of gold was not worth going back after, during the depression people in this are did go back to mining to buy bread, but when times got better they had other jobs which paid better, much of the gold is still there, most of it deep down under the ground, now how can we dig that far down safely and keep our miners cool and with fresh air, today we have better equipment to mine with, normally small miners do not do much good they did good to move enough material to feed themselves, because of the amount of material that needs moved or processed, most small miners were normally prospectors trying to find a good gold mine, they could sell claims to the bigger investors or companies, the small miner could not normally mine enough gold to get rich but enough to be able eat with the help of wild game, there were exceptions, most prospectors were not miners, the ones who were miners were trying to make enough money to buy a farm, or ranch, where they may be able to eat better, it takes big companies, investors to buy equipment, hire people and have big enough equipment and capital to keep the mine in business, my question when will our government give us back the right to our "public lands", or when will the people stand back up and demand their right to those public lands, and their right to mine those lands, with the price of gold today times are ripe to open new mines in our country, the equipment today is better, safety is better, and it can help to put our people back to work being able to buy bread, it is not only gold, but many metals we could mine, we could also put our country back to work with logging our forest (responsibly), lumber mills, building houses and making furniture, and also we could go back to mining our oil, so we are not starving trying to buy gas to get to work, personally I am not worried if we will run out of gold to process that will never happen, I think we have bigger problems of getting our politicians, back to working for the people, instead of working to control the people, well I have to stop rambling before they ban me for getting into political side of the whole problem as I see it.


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## Captobvious (Mar 31, 2013)

I was actually wondering earlier if it were possible to mine retired landfills over in this thread http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=17640 but being it was as far down the list in the forums I wonder if the views could be better.

Has anyone ever investigated the EPA regulations for cracking open an old landfill? There was plenty of speculation but nothing concrete.


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