Royal Mint partnership connects e-waste recovery with prisoner rehabilitation
Circuit boards are manually dismantled in supervised prison-industry workshops.
Recovered gold being held above a pile of printed circuit boards from end-of-life electronics
© The Royal MintThe Royal Mint’s precious metals recovery business Reformation Metals is retrieving circuit boards from end-of-life televisions and other electronic waste collected at civic amenity sites across the UK.
The circuit boards are manually dismantled at Recycling Lives Services’ Preston facility in Lancashire, UK, then sent to Reformation Metals in Llantrisant, Wales, for extraction of gold and other precious metals.
This is keeping valuable materials within the domestic UK economy while creating employment and skills development opportunities for prisoners in supervised work programmes. It could provide a pathway to rebuild their confidence and develop transferable skills.
Each batch of circuit boards is graded, itemised and verified by Recycling Lives Services prior to dispatch, ensuring full traceability and the consistent material quality needed for precious metal recovery and recycling at The Royal Mint’s facility.
