From motherboard to ring: is e-waste gold the future of jewellery?

A vast and highly dispersed urban mine

Circuit boards in phones, laptops, servers and televisions use gold in corrosion-resistant connections. Some electronic streams can contain a higher gold concentration than ore, but the material is dispersed across millions of devices, countries and informal channels. Collection, separation and safe refining are the real difficulty.

The Global E-waste Monitor says the waste stream is growing five times faster than documented recycling. Much of its metal value is lost, while informal processing can expose workers and communities to hazardous substances. Urban mining is therefore not chemistry alone; it requires collection infrastructure and enforceable rules.

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What has The Royal Mint built?

The Royal Mint built a roughly 3,700-square-metre facility in South Wales using Excir technology to recover gold from circuit boards at ambient temperature. It states capacity of up to 90 tonnes of boards a week and hundreds of kilograms of gold a year. Stated capacity is not the same as independently reported continuous output and should be read accordingly.

In 2025, The Royal Mint's 886 jewellery brand introduced a bridal collection made in 18ct gold recovered from end-of-life electronics. The recovered material is not merely a back-end sourcing detail; it becomes central to product story, design and brand differentiation.

Recycled gold creates brand value only when the route back into the product is more verifiable than the slogan.

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Three misunderstandings about recycled gold

First, not all recycled gold comes from electronics. The World Gold Council says at least 90 per cent comes from jewellery, with technology supplying the remainder. Second, recycled does not by itself describe energy, chemistry or labour conditions. Third, remelting old gold in a workshop is not the same as a documented industrial recycling chain.

A credible assessment examines waste source, collection, refiner, recovery rate, residue management, energy use and chain of custody. If only the finished ring receives a green label, the main impact of the process remains invisible.

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Opportunity and danger for Iran's industry

For Iran's jewellery industry, the opportunity becomes credible only if formal collection of end-of-life electronics connects licensed recyclers, refiners, assay laboratories and jewellery manufacturers. A limited collection could document input mass, recovered output, final fineness and maker.

The dangerous route is dispersed acid recovery without control of fumes, wastewater and residue. The value of a few grams of gold must not externalise harm to workers and communities. This field requires chemical engineering, licensing and scale; it is not a decorative workshop experiment.

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What can design add to the loop?

If recovered gold becomes another anonymous object, much of the cultural opportunity is lost. Design can extend material history through form, numbering, a product passport, repairability and future recyclability. The piece should be made for long use, not sold only through the story of its past.

The best outcome is a jewel that uses secondary feedstock and, within a verified system, can reduce reliance on newly mined material without becoming the next waste object. Durability, service and continuing use matter as much as recycled origin.

Sources for this section: [6] · [7]