On a recent, rather stormy Tuesday afternoon, former U.S. vice president Al Gore and an assortment of Silicon Valley executives assembled in an unlikely spot—Osceola, Arkansas—to break ground on a promising new venture.

    Backed by $35 million in financing, California-based startup BlueOak Resources is building a brand-new facility in this city of 8,000 or so, but it’s not to manufacture a new high-tech gadget. Quite the opposite, in fact: BlueOak’s new operation will be what it calls the nation’s first “urban mining” refinery dedicated to recovering valuable metals such as gold, silver, copper and palladium from the growing mountains of e-waste currently threatening to overwhelm the planet.

    “Every day, U.S. consumers dispose of enough cell phones to cover 50 football fields,” said Privahini Bradoo, BlueOak’s chief executive.

    Although between 7% and 10% of the world’s gold and 30% of the silver produced goes into electronics, only 15% of the 50 million tons of e-waste created globally each year undergoes any recycling, Bradoo said. Instead, the vast majority of devices are dumped in landfills or exported to countries where e-waste is hand-picked over open fires.

    The city of Guiyu, China—widely considered the world’s e-waste capital—receives some 4,000 tons of the stuff per hour. It also has the highest-ever recorded level of dioxins, and 90% of its residents have neurological damage, Bradoo said. “Not only is it a humanitarian disaster, but when we looked at the value contained in e-scrap, it was shocking,” she added.

    With support from the Arkansas Teachers’ Retirement Fund, a consortium of European and domestic investors, and the Arkansas Development Finance Authority, BlueOak’s new refinery will process 15 million pounds of electronic scrap per year initially, rapidly expanding from there. Production will begin by the end of 2015, bringing 50 technical jobs to the area. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is one of BlueOak’s major investors.

    ‘For every ounce, 30 tons of waste’

    “Developing a 21st-century, high-quality recovery process for the valuable materials in electronic waste is very important,” said Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Urban Program.

    E-waste is the fastest-growing component of the municipal solid waste stream, and given all the precious metals, valuable plastics and recyclable glass electronics contain, “the fact that these are being routinely discarded makes no sense,” Hershkowitz said.

    Indeed, roughly 10 ounces of gold can be extracted from every ton of printed circuit boards, Bradoo said; you’d need to process 100 tons of gold ore or more to get the same amount.

    More to the point, “for every ounce of gold that has to be mined in the field, we produce 30 tons of waste” including mercury and cyanide, Hershkowitz said. “Compare that with recovering an ounce of gold from electronic waste—you’d eliminate that gigantic ecological burden.”

    There are, of course, U.S. companies already out there that specialize in refurbishing and recycling used electronics—Sims Recycling and ECS Refining are two larger examples. Typically, though, such companies dismantle unrefurbishable devices either manually or with automated shredders to recover their aluminum, steel and plastic but ship the circuit boards to smelters overseas, Bradoo said.

    It’s those circuit boards where most of the high-value metals reside, she added. In order to reclaim them in a sustainable way, BlueOak’s facility will take the boards, pulverize them further and put them through a high-temperature plasma-arc furnace.

    ‘Value recovery from every part of that chain’

    Europe has long been ahead of the United States in its e-waste solutions, thanks not just to government mandates and an emphasis on recycling but also to infrastructure already in place there.

    “They had domestic secondary smelters that had the capital and the capability to redirect some of their capacity toward e-waste,” Bradoo said.

    最近一个暴雨如注的周二下午，美国前副总统艾尔•戈尔和一众硅谷高管聚集在一个他们似乎不大可能出现的地方——阿肯色州奥西奥拉市，参加一家很有前途的新企业的动工仪式。

    在高达3,500万美元融资的支持下，总部位于加州的蓝橡树资源回收公司(BlueOak Resources)准备在这座拥有大约8,000人口的小城建设一家新工厂，但它要生产的并不是某种高科技新玩意。恰恰相反：在电子垃圾堆积如山，似乎要淹没全球的大背景下，蓝橡树的新设施将成为全美第一家致力于回收金、银、铜和钯等贵重金属的“城市采矿(urban mining)”冶炼厂。

    蓝橡树公司CEO普里瓦伊尼•布拉多说：“美国消费者每天扔掉的手机足以覆盖50个橄榄球场。”

    布拉多表示，尽管全世界生产的7%到10%的黄金和30%的银都变成了电子产品部件，但在全球每年产生的5,000万吨电子垃圾中，仅有15%经过某种形式的回收处理。绝大多数设备都被弃置于垃圾填埋场，或者被出口到海外，最终用明火焚烧。

    外界普遍认为，位于中国广东省汕头市的贵屿镇是全球电子垃圾之都。贵屿镇每小时大约收到4,000吨垃圾。这座小镇的二恶英类有机污染物目前已达到有记载以来的最高水平，布拉多说，当地九成居民的神经系统都受到了损伤。她补充说：“这当然是一场人道主义灾难，但这些电子废料包含的价值同样令人震惊。”

    蓝橡树公司准备建设的新冶炼厂获得了来自阿肯色州教师退休基金(Arkansas Teachers’ Retirement Fund)，一个由欧洲和美国国内投资者组成的财团，以及阿肯色开发金融管理局(Arkansas Development Finance Authority)的支持。这座工厂计划在起初阶段每年处理1,500万磅电子废料，随后将迅速扩大。这家冶炼厂将于2015年末正式投产，预计将为当地带来50个技术工作岗位。凯鹏华盈风投公司(Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)是蓝橡树的主要投资者之一。

    “开采一盎司黄金会生产30吨垃圾”

    “开发一种面向21世纪，针对电子垃圾蕴含的贵重材料的高品质回收流程，具有非常重要的意义，”供职于美国自然资源保护委员会(Natural Resources Defense Council)都市的资深科学家艾伦•赫什科维茨说。

    电子垃圾是城市固体废弃物中增长最快的组成部分，鉴于电子产品包含了大量贵金属、贵重塑料和可回收玻璃，赫什科维茨说，“它们遭到习惯性地丢弃这个事实简直不合情理。”

    布拉多说，事实上，从每吨印刷电路板中可提取大约10盎司黄金。而要获得相同数量的黄金，人们至少需要处理100吨金矿石。

    更重要的是，“在矿山开采一盎司黄金会生产30吨废物，”其中包括汞和氰化物，赫什科维茨说。“相比之下，从电子垃圾中回收黄金，可以消除如此巨大的生态负担。”

    当然，已经有美国公司在专门从事翻修和回收二手电子产品业务，Sims Recycling和ECS Refining是其中两个规模较大的例子。布拉多说，这类公司通常采用手动方式或自动粉碎机来拆除不可翻新的设备，以便回收它们的铝、钢和塑料，但电路板则被运送至海外的冶炼厂。

    她补充说，大多数贵重金属恰恰蕴含在这些电路板之中。为了以可持续的方式回收贵重金属，蓝橡树公司的新工厂将接收这些电路板，进一步粉碎加工，然后把它们放入等离子电弧炉进行熔化。

    “从价值链的每个部分中回收价值”

    长久以来，欧洲的电子垃圾解决方案一直领先于美国，不仅仅是因为政府颁布了相关指令，企业重视回收问题，还应该归功于已经到位的基础设施。

    布拉多说：“欧洲一些国家的二级冶炼厂拥有充足的资本和技术能力，它们能够重新利用一些产能来处理电子垃圾。”

    Even there, though, “there are no facilities we’re aware of that are dedicated to recovering precious metals from electronic scrap,” she said.

    Yet while BlueOak’s urban mining refinery may be “exactly the kind of facility that we need from an ecological perspective,” some key economic realities will have to be overcome, NRDC’s Hershkowitz said.

    “The challenge here is going to be getting the electronic waste to the facility, because right now only a fraction of electronic waste is effectively recovered for recycling,” he added. “From an economic perspective, we need government requirements, as they have in Europe, that obligate the consumer products companies to participate in funding the infrastructure to recover these materials for recycling or refurbishment.”

    Initially, BlueOak will rely on suppliers that are already collecting and dismantling e-waste, but “our hope is that by creating more value in that value chain, that will promote the front-end recycling,” Bradoo said.

    The automotive industry is an inspiring model, she noted, with a recycling rate of about 95%. “That’s because you have value recovery from every part of that value chain,” she said. “An entire industry has focused on ensuring that there’s recycling.”

    Alternatively, much the way deposit-refund systems have been used successfully to encourage container recycling, it’s possible a similar scheme could be applied to electronics, she said.

    Either way, “we want the entire value chain to grow and to create an ecosystem that supports the overall recycling and recovery of as much value as possible from electronics so we don’t think of it as a waste stream,” Bradoo explained.

    ‘We need to see real leadership’

    Approaches like BlueOak’s urban mining refinery “have the potential to be an important part of the solution, to recycle the materials embedded in these devices, reducing the demand for virgin materials and the energy needed to produce them,” said Gary Cook, a senior IT analyst with Greenpeace.

    Greenpeace also wants to see more robust efforts from the electronics sector, Cook said, such as stronger take-back programs and a commitment to using recycled materials in electronics products.

    But it starts at the top. “What we also need to see is real leadership from electronics manufacturers in creating products that are designed to have a longer life,” Cook said, citing the example of modular mobile phones such as Phonebloks and Project Ara, “and not designed for the dump in two to three years.”

    不过，即使在欧洲，“目前也没有专门从电子废料中回收贵金属的工厂，”她说。

    然而，尽管蓝橡树公司的城市采矿厂“从生态的角度看，或许是我们需要的那种设施，”但这家工厂还需要克服一些关键的经济现实，美国自然资源保护委员会的赫什科维茨说。

    “亟需应对的挑战是，如何把电子垃圾送往这家工厂，因为目前只有一小部分电子垃圾被有效地回收再利用，”他补充说。“从经济角度来看，我们需要政府效仿欧洲的做法，强制要求电子消费类公司出资建造用来回收利用或翻新这些材料的基础设施。”

    在起初阶段，蓝橡树公司将依靠已经开始收集和拆解电子垃圾的供应商，但布拉多说，“我们希望在这个价值链中创造更多价值，以推动前端的回收利用。”

    她指出，作为一个鼓舞人心的典范，汽车行业的再循环比率目前已达到95%左右。“这是因为价值链的每个部分都有回收价值，”她说。“整个行业都在专心致志地确保资源能够回收利用。”

    作为另一种选择，就像押金退款制度已经被成功地用于鼓励容器回收一样，她说，电子产品或许也可以应用类似方案。

    无论采取哪种方式，布拉多解释说，“我们都希望整个价值链迅速增长，希望创建一个生态系统，以支持从电子产品中回收利用尽可能多的价值。这样一来，我们就不再把它看成一个废物流。”

    “我们需要看到真正的领导力”

    像蓝橡树公司城市采矿厂这类方式“有望成为电子垃圾解决方案的重要组成部分，它们能够回收嵌入电子设备的材料，从而减少对原生材料和生产这些材料所需能源的需求，”绿色和平组织(Greenpeace)资深IT分析师加里•库克说。

    库克表示，绿色和平组织还希望看到电子行业采取更有力的措施，比如更完善的回收计划，承诺使用再生材料生产电子产品。

    但这些努力必须由最高层率先推动。库克说，“我们还需要看到电子产品制造商展现出真正的领导力，需要它们设计、制造拥有更长生命周期的产品。” 他还援引了模块化手机制造商 Phonebloks和 Project Ara的例子。“它们不能继续设计一些使用两三年就不得不废弃的产品。”（财富中文网）

    译者：叶寒