Piles of junk are seen in a large truck at a shelter, the electronic waste material is used electronic junk that is commonly found in homes, offices or at least in electronic service places.

These items are electronic equipment that has become waste, ironically this type of waste is experiencing very fast growth. Even the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) of the United Nations noted that electronic waste in the world is increasing by 40 million tons per year. This is because electronic goods have an operational life and also the consumptive attitude of humans who always want new products.

However, from the waste that is harmful to the environment, it turns out that there are valuable materials besides metal and plastic, including silver, palladium, platinum, ruthenium, and even gold. This valuable material is what drives the emergence of "city miners", aka e-waste seekers who look for gold and other valuable materials by processing the waste.

City miners look for electronic waste such as televisions and computer hardware, the component parts that are sought are mainly connectors and contacts on circuit boards because they contain gold which functions as electrical conductor components in low-voltage or low-current devices. Data from Wired magazine shows that an average cell phone unit contains an estimated 0.2 grams of gold, mostly found on the SIM card, logic board and components behind the LCD screen.

A city miner in Jakarta recounts that they look for waste in garbage dumps, come to junk collectors or participate in auctions of electronic goods sold by a company. After that they separate the components that have gold content.

Gold is taken by burning components containing gold, burned to separate from plastic components, then continue to process it by using chemicals named hydrochloric acid, hydrogen peroxide and mercury. After successfully stripping the gold part, then it is being melted with a chemical in the form of borax. To get 99.9 percent pure gold, a purification process must be carried out using hard water to separate other metal elements that are still attached to the gold.

After going through a process of approximately 2-3 days, 99.9 percent pure gold can be obtained and can be reprocessed into jewelry with a high selling value.

Photos and text : Muhammad Adimaja