Designers of everything from mobile phones to electric car batteries should make their products far easier to recycle to offset soaring demand for metals, two United Nations reports have recommended. Products should be made to become “designer minerals” at the end of their lifetimes so they can more simply be broken up and stripped of metals ranging from copper to gold, according to the twin studies.
See http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=12270&l=1.