China is plagued by a large number of illegal workshops dealing with extracting precious materials from old smartphones. Gold, silver and copper can all become a bounty of criminals crafty enough to know how to get them. One of such workshops has recently been raided by the chinese police. A whole family from one of China’s innumerable villages have taken part in the operation of illegal recycling. What is so bad about that? Well, nothing, except for litres of toxic waste that the recyclers usually get rid of in unsafe, nature-destroying manner. Primitive and irresponsible material extraction techniques of these people end with a lot of waste product that then proceeds to contaminate the soil and water of the area.

One Jason Love, a scientist from Edynburgh, is working on making phone recycling an easier and cleaner process. His method consists of basically dipping the device in a solution of acid and an organic reagent, which makes the gold pretty much leak out of the phone.