A Safe And Easy Way To Mine Metals From E-Waste

Our old gadgets create millions of tons of electronic waste each year, which is hazardously recycled in impoverished countries. One U.K.-based designer aims to change the process. We don’t often think about the final resting place of our favorite devices. But much of the electronics we throw away--computers, phones, televisions--gets illegally dumped in poverty-stricken countries like Ghana and Nigeria, which lack the infrastructure to recycle the parts efficiently. Instead, they are stripped down by hand, and some pieces are haphazardly set ablaze to extract the valuable metals within, exposing workers to harmful toxins. Hal Watts, a designer and recent graduate of the Imperial College in London, has devised an easier, safer way to recycle copper wiring, one of the most common forms of e-waste. His device, called Esource--which started out as his final project at Imperial--i...