We’re told that lots of something that people use is in lots of things that people use:

About 7% of the world’s gold supplies are trapped inside existing electronic devices, meaning that, according to some estimates, by 2080 the largest metal reserves will not be underground but in circulation as existing products. What’s more, one tonne of extracted gold ore yields 3g of gold, whereas recycling one tonne of mobile phones yields 300g. So waste dumps and landfill sites are the new resource-rich mines.

Gold could be lying around in some mountain somewhere or it could be in some handy or TV that people like to use. We think we’re just fine with the idea that some portion of it is in use rather than lying around in some mountain.

We’d also note that it’s not actually unusual for some large portion of available metal to be in use somewhere. AT&T spent much of the 1970s paranoid that someone would realise that their telephone network was the world’s largest store of refined - and increasingly valuable - copper.

But it’s clear that folk are shocked by this. Or at least worried about that value that might be missed at the end of useful life of the electronics. If only we could devise some system that could sort this out for us. Aid in deciding what to do with that waste even.

Which, of course, we have. That combination of human greed - sorry, enlightened self interest - and the price system. When gold is profitable to extract from waste electronics then gold will be extracted from waste electronics. That lust for lucre will see to that.

That is, assuming that those facts on offer are true (not something we’d wholly agree with, gold plating in modern electronics is much thinner than the old stuff these numbers are derived from) then we’ve already the decision making process in place. The political and societal task then becomes being wise enough to leave it be and allow it to work to its conclusion.