Urban Mining
Circuit boards are 50 times richer in gold than gold ore. One ton of telecom boards contains 200-250 grams of gold. One ton of rock from a mine contains 5 grams. The problem is getting it out without destroying the value or sending it overseas.
Japanese company Astec-irie's Kitakyushu plant has solved this with three proprietary machines. Superheated steam melts solder in minutes without damaging components. AI-trained cameras identify parts by sight—semiconductors, capacitors, connectors—and sort them automatically at 90%+ accuracy. Gold-plated components go into ferric chloride baths that dissolve the copper and nickel underneath while leaving gold intact. Filter it out at 90%+ purity. No smelter, no cyanide tanks, no shipping to Asia. Three workers do what used to take twenty.
Japan built this because China cut off exports of rare earths in 2010. Couldn't trust the supply chain, so they mined their own landfills instead. Spent fifteen years perfecting automated recovery. Made 5,000 Olympic medals from old phones. Turned e-waste processing into a strategic materials program.
Canada generates 1.2 million tons of e-waste yearly and rising—old servers, telecom equipment, consumer electronics. That's billions in gold, silver, palladium, and rare earths sitting in drawers and landfills. We recycle only 20% properly. The rest goes to landfills or gets shipped overseas for processing. Either way, the value and the strategic materials leave the country.
Labor costs kill domestic processing. Manual sorting is expensive and slow. Chemical recovery requires expertise most recyclers don't have. So Canadian e-waste goes to Asian facilities with cheaper labor and looser environmental rules. We export the problem and import the refined metals back.
Astec-irie's system makes it profitable to process locally. AI vision eliminates manual sorting. Chemical recovery happens on-site in hours, not weeks overseas. Small footprint, low labor, high-purity output. Proven technology, not R&D risk. Japan's already running it at scale; 360 tonnes of circuit boards meant 30 kg of recovered gold. There are 34 critical minerals on circuit boards we're currently just wasting.
Install Japanese automation at Canadian recycling facilities. Keep strategic materials domestic. Turn e-waste from an export problem into a supply chain solution. Fruitbloom is building the capacity before the next trade war, not during it.
Close The E-Waste Circuit