E-waste

Pictures of discarded computer circuit boards. Biomining is an innovative way of mining valuable metals from printed circuit boards like these, which usually end up in landfill.

Motherboards as mother lode

Did you know there is up to 100 times more gold in a tonne of mobile phones than in a tonne of gold ore? Microbes could underpin a new urban biomining industry, where gold, silver, copper and other e-waste metals are extracted more cleanly and more economically than through conventional mining.

Woman looking a phone

The waste problem hiding in your mobile phone

The allure of new technology has created a little talked about waste problem. Lithium ion batteries power many of our devices yet are not recycled effectively, if at all. In order to close the loop on battery resources, Australian researchers are looking ahead and creating sustainable technologies to recycle these batteries.