urban mining
Salvaging discarded electronics
Urban mining refers to the recovery of valuable materials—especially metals like gold, copper, and rare earth elements—from discarded electronics, buildings, and other manufactured waste rather than from traditional ore extraction.
The term frames cities and landfills as resource deposits comparable to geological mines.
Urban mining recovers more gold per ton from old circuit boards than traditional mining does from ore.
The practice addresses both resource scarcity and the environmental costs of conventional mining.
- e-wasteDiscarded technological devices
- recyclingReprocessing used materials
- scrapDiscarded bit or tussle
- metalsLustrous conductive elements
- recoveryRegaining what was lost
landfill · circuit boards · copper · gold · buried treasure · extraction · salvage · precious metals · dismantling · strip down · shredding · reclaim · rare earth · smartphones · obsolete · electronics · refurbishment · resource
urban miningopen-pit mining
Surface excavation for minerals
underground mining · strip mining · quarrying · deep-sea mining · resource extraction
urban, mining, urbane, urbanite, urbanize, urbanization, urbanism, urbanity, suburban