Science & Technology

Can gold be extracted from human waste ?

By T.K. Randall
March 24, 2015

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Over the last few years techniques have been developed to use the waste we flush down our toilets for everything from powering a bus to producing drinkable water, but now experts have revealed that sewage might also contain significant amounts of precious metals such as gold that could be extracted and reused.

The discovery suggests that it may be commercially viable to "mine" these metals, a process that would also help to reduce the amount of waste materials that would normally need to be buried or burnt.

"If you can get rid of some of the nuisance metals that currently limit how much of these biosolids we can use on fields and forests, and at the same time recover valuable metals and other elements, that's a win-win," said Kathleen Smith of the US Geological Survey.A study by Arizona State University indicated that a city with around one million inhabitants could flush anywhere in the region of $13 million worth of precious metals down the toilet every year.

In Japan this idea has already been taken a step further with the opening of an actual treatment facility that extracts as much gold from sewage as can be found in some commercial gold mines.

Whether people will actually want to buy items made from these metals however remains to be seen.

Source: The Guardian

Tags: Gold, Recycling, Sewage