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The Forum: Modern Alchemy

Modern Alchemy

22/02/2014

BBC Radio 4 - The Forum, Modern Alchemy

Transforming waste into valuable products, with Bridget Kendall and guests.

Bridget Kendall meets the modern alchemists pioneering new ways of recycling. With guests metal expert Adam Minter, water refiner Alison Lewis and road-dust miner Angela Murray.

We look at some of the most ingenious ways in which entrepreneurs and scientists are turning useless junk into precious gold, or at least extracting the elements we can go on using. 

Joining Bridget Kendall are:

South African Professor of Chemical Engineering Alison Lewis, who's developed a new technique which can freeze contaminated water, and recover both pure water and the so-called 'toxins' as usable products. 

Dr Angela Murray's project Roads to Riches retrieves microscopic amounts of platinum group metals - lost from cars' catalytic converters - from road dust, then uses bacteria to convert them back into catalyst, for example for hydrogen fuel cells. 

Journalist Adam Minter's book Junkyard Planet reveals how the billion-dollar global recycling trade works. From his vantage point in China, he says that even the worst, dirtiest recycling is still better than the very best mining.

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