Did you know you might be sitting on a goldmine? Not buried deep underground, but tucked away in your kitchen drawer or at the back of your cupboard?
Every year, Australians discard millions of electronic devices - old phones, broken laptops, outdated TVs - many of which end up in landfill or languishing in drawers. But behind those cracked screens and tangled wires is something surprising: gold. And thanks to a promising new breakthrough, recovering that gold just became safer, cleaner, and more accessible.
Gold extracted from e-waste by Flinders University researchers.
Gold is prized in electronics for good reason: it doesn’t corrode, it conducts electricity flawlessly, and it can be recycled infinitely without degrading. That durability is part of what makes it so valuable. A single iPhone contains roughly 0.034 grams of gold. Not much on its own, but when scaled globally, it’s significant. In fact, the world discards around 53.6 million tonnes of electronic waste every year, and much of it ends up in landfill. It's estimated that for every million recycled smartphones, around 34 kilograms of gold can be recovered - worth well over AUD $3 million at today’s prices.
In 2022, humans produced an estimated 62 million tonnes of electronic waste. That’s enough to fill over 23,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Traditionally, recovering that gold has come at a cost. Methods like cyanide leaching and aqua regia (a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids) are highly effective, but also highly toxic, dangerous to handle, and difficult to dispose of safely. That’s where a new development from researchers at Flinders University comes in. There, the team has designed a water-based method that uses a benign organic molecule to separate gold from other metals. It’s safe, low-energy, biodegradable, and highly selective - recovering up to 99% of gold from printed circuit boards, with no toxic by-products.
Connector pins in a central processing unit (CPU) are coated with gold to ensure optimal conductivity and corrosion resistance - critical for high-performance computing.
How does it work? The organic compound, called β-cyclodextrin, acts as a molecular “host” that binds with gold ions in solution. This enables it to draw the gold out of the mixture of shredded circuit boards, leaving other base metals behind. The process occurs at room temperature and can be scaled up relatively easily, with the team estimating the method to be commercially viable within the next five years.
So why does this matter for Australia and for the gold industry more broadly?
For one, it reshapes how we think about gold. Australia is the world’s second-largest producer of mined gold, but as global attention shifts towards sustainability and resource circularity, secondary sources of gold (like e-waste) are becoming increasingly important. The ability to recover gold from old electronics using safe, scalable chemistry could complement traditional mining, reduce pressure on natural resources, and create new value chains.
The potential benefits go beyond the environment. By enabling small, decentralised recycling operations - especially in urban centres where e-waste is concentrated - this innovation could open up new industries, create jobs in advanced recycling and tech, and help Australia reduce its reliance on offshore waste processing. As it stands, only about 17.4% of global e-waste is currently collected and recycled properly. That leaves a huge opportunity gap.
And it speaks to something deeper about gold itself. Unlike many other metals, gold never wears out. It can be melted, refined and reused again and again without losing its properties. That makes it uniquely positioned for a circular economy, and uniquely worth recovering. Every gram we recycle is a gram we don’t need to mine, and every device we divert from landfill is a win for the environment.
This innovation won’t replace traditional mining - nor should it. But it highlights the gold industry’s evolving future, one where chemistry, circularity and sustainability are just as important as extraction. With strong research capabilities, a robust gold sector, and growing interest in green innovation, Australia is well placed to lead the way.
The next gold rush might not be underground. It might be in our hands, our homes, and increasingly in our science labs.