What is Material Recovery?
- Definition
- Material recovery is the process of extracting valuable raw materials from recycled electronics, including precious metals (gold, silver, palladium), copper, aluminum, and plastics.
Material recovery is the final stage of the electronics recycling process, where devices that cannot be remarketed are broken down into their component materials for reuse. Electronics contain a surprisingly rich mix of valuable materials — a single ton of circuit boards contains more gold than a ton of gold ore.
The material recovery process typically involves manual disassembly to separate components (batteries, cables, plastics, circuit boards), mechanical shredding and sorting using magnets, eddy current separators, and optical sorters, and downstream processing by specialized smelters and refineries that extract individual metals.
Common materials recovered from electronics include: copper (from wiring, circuit boards, heat sinks), aluminum (from enclosures and heat sinks), steel (from chassis and frames), gold, silver, and palladium (from circuit board contacts and connectors), and various plastics (from enclosures and components). Proper material recovery keeps these valuable resources in the manufacturing supply chain and out of landfills.
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