Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/03/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]It has been known by the silver recovery industry, for over 20 years, that silver was erroneously placed on the "hazardous" waste list. But the industry didn't complain as it meant more equipment sales. Just recently, I read (don't remember where) that this (Ag) was being re-evaluated as a "hazardous" waste. Mercury and other exotic metals yes. Silver/Gold no. I'm not an expert. But as I said, I designed two lines of computer controlled silver recovery products. The companies I worked for, as well as the refiners, (their chemists) used to laugh at the EPA regulation. The worst part of recovery is at the refiners. They use a very very toxic Cyanide based process for raw recovery. And then have to dispose of the Cyanide. Like putting MTBE in our gasoline. Stupid! Causes more problems than it solves. Jim At 08:39 AM 3/8/99 -0800, you wrote: >On silver recovery... > >> George, silver's so cheap right now, that you'd have to go through a lot of >> fixer to make recovery pay for itself. > > It's not cool to dump silver in the drain. Nevertheless, as we recover >silver from all our fixers and the Wing-Lynch machine in a college darkroom, >we're required to send the almost-pure silver flake to hazardous waste! > >-Gary > colbyg@ulv.edu