Urban Mining

摘要

The current commercial explosion of electronic and other complex consumer items has placed significant strains on material resource chains,particularly transition and rare earth metals.Whilst recycling the valuable metals from these items might seem like a no-brainer,their complexity and physical and chemical construction reduces the viability for economic segregation and recovery of all the materials.For this reason,large stores of scrap electronic devices,which are considered uneconomic to recycle,are growing in cities around the globe.Li-ion batteries are a good example of components which are being stored in special facilities waiting for the development of economic recycling methods.The use of these stores now has the new appellation’Urban Mining1.Simply put:Urban Mining is the process of reclaiming raw materials from spent products,buildings and waste.The name actually dates back to the 1980s and was coined by Professor Hideo Nanjyo of Tohoku University.