{"id":215685,"date":"2025-06-10T06:12:04","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T11:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/turning-trash-into-treasure-how-microwaves-are-revolutionizing-e-waste-recycling"},"modified":"2025-06-10T06:12:04","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T11:12:04","slug":"turning-trash-into-treasure-how-microwaves-are-revolutionizing-e-waste-recycling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/turning-trash-into-treasure-how-microwaves-are-revolutionizing-e-waste-recycling","title":{"rendered":"Turning trash into treasure: How microwaves are revolutionizing e-waste recycling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/turning-trash-into-treasure-how-microwaves-are-revolutionizing-e-waste-recycling2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>You may not have heard of tantalum, but chances are you\u2019re holding some right now. It\u2019s an essential component in our cell phones and laptops, and currently, there\u2019s no effective substitute. Even if you plan to recycle your devices after they die, the tantalum inside is <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2025-05-critical-minerals-dont-landfills-microwave.html\">likely to end up in a landfill or shipped overseas<\/a>, being lost forever.<\/p>\n<p>As a researcher focused on critical materials recovery, I\u2019ve spent years digging through <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/electronic+waste\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">electronic waste<\/a>, not seeing it as garbage, but as an urban mine filled with valuable materials like <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/tantalum\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">tantalum<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may not have heard of tantalum, but chances are you\u2019re holding some right now. It\u2019s an essential component in our cell phones and laptops, and currently, there\u2019s no effective substitute. Even if you plan to recycle your devices after they die, the tantalum inside is likely to end up in a landfill or shipped [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,1512,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-mobile-phones","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}