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7 results for “Urban mining” in Industry
Industry · 28 July 2026
Urban Mining: The Richest Gold Ore on Earth Is in Your Old Phone
…t tonnage, is what makes an ore economic — and e-waste is extraordinarily concentrated by mining standards. · The bottleneck is collection and logistics, not metallurgy; the chemistry has been solved for decades. · Informal backyard recovery captures a fraction of the gold while…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Industry · 4 August 2026
The Gold Inside Your Phone
…multi-decade mission life without the possibility of manual intervention. · The ethics of urban mining · The rise of 'urban mining' — the recovery of gold and other metals from electronic waste — has brought new focus to the ethical and environmental standards of the recycling in…
Tomas Herrera · 18 min read
Industry · 6 August 2026
The Scrap Trade
…y of the scrap trade mirrors the geography of gold ownership rather than the geography of mining. India, the Middle East, Turkey and East Asia — regions with deep cultural traditions of holding wealth in jewellery — supply the largest volumes, because households there hold gold i…
Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read
Industry · 20 August 2026
The Refiner's Ledger
…through its supply chain, identify red flags such as sourcing from armed-group-controlled mining areas or the use of intermediaries with no verifiable operations, and refuse or investigate further any material that cannot be adequately traced. Independent third-party auditors per…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
After the Cyanide
…ontinue for centuries, which makes it the single largest long-term liability in hard-rock mining. · Why do tailings dams fail? Most failures trace to construction method, water management or foundation conditions rather than to a single dramatic event. Upstream-raised dams, built…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Industry · 2 July 2026
Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery
…ength, ongoing proficiency testing against umpire samples, and a sourcing and responsible-mining policy that is independently audited on a cycle of years, not once at entry. A refiner that cuts corners on any of the three loses the accreditation that makes its bars fungible acros…
Tomas Herrera · 19 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
How Fake Gold Is Detected
Counterfeiting gold is not about making something that looks right. It is about defeating a specific test, and the industry's defences are an escalating conversation between forgers and instruments. ·…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
