Brits sitting on £1.6B gold mine of Windows 10 junk as support ends
- Reference: 1759910589
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/10/08/windows_10_precious_metals/
- Source link:
Gold worth more than £1.6 billion could be recovered from UK devices obsoleted when Microsoft discontinues free support on October 14, according to Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) experts at Businesswaste.co.uk.
The eye-popping number comes from taking the UK's share of the global PC market and applying it to the current best guess of how many devices are unable to accept the Windows 11 upgrade, respectively corresponding to 3.6 percent and 400 million devices. This translates to 14.4 million obsolete PCs in the UK.
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Then there is the question of device type: in this case, 70 percent laptops and 30 percent desktops, and respective weights of 1.5 and 12 kg.
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Finally, there is the question of how much material can be recovered per ton. Businesswaste.co.uk used figures from E-Parisara, which give 190.5 kg of copper, 0.28 kg of gold, and 0.45 kg of silver.
Multiply it all together, stir in the respective current values of precious metals, and you get £1.6 billion for gold, as well as nearly £100 million for copper and £33 million for silver. All told, Businesswaste.co.uk estimates that almost £1.8 billion could be generated from the e-waste arising from Windows 10 machines that cannot be updated.
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It isn't that simple, of course. The figures do not account for regional variations in Windows 11 readiness, nor do they consider that most affected enterprises will have factored Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESUs) into their planning.
Businesswaste.co.uk told The Register that it had indeed not factored ESUs into its calculations, but contended that the program is not intended as a long-term solution. "While some uptake of ESUs may stagger WEEE generation slightly, the overall scale of device turnover remains significant," a spokesperson said.
"While not exact, estimating based on the UK's share of global PCs offers a useful sense of the scale of devices nearing end of support and the resulting e-waste."
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A pile of obsolete devices won't suddenly appear at recycling centers on October 15, but all those devices will have to be dealt with at some point. And their [6]data will have to be destroyed or serious security issues could arise.
[7]Annual electronic waste footprint per person is 11.2 kg
[8]Apple iOS 26 set to dump 75M iPhones on the e-waste pile
[9]GenAI's dirty secret: It's set to create a mountainous increase in e-waste
[10]PIRG's 'Electronic Waste Graveyard' lists 100+ gadgets dumped after support vanished
Stephen Haskew, director of sustainability and growth at Circular Computing, told The Register options are available to those with devices that cannot upgrade to Windows 11. ChromeOS Flex is one, although that would bring its [11]own challenges . Alternatively, passing the redundant hardware on to a worthy cause, where charities can install a user-friendly Linux, is a reasonable choice.
"But certainly, what we want to avoid at all costs is that product entering an e-waste stream," he said. "E-waste is a hugely growing problem for the world."
Haskew believes that the majority of larger enterprises will have the problem under control and likely already have relationships with IT asset disposal (ITAD) contractors to handle obsolete devices. For smaller companies or individuals, the difficulties may lie in what to do with their old hardware once the Windows 10 ESUs come to an end.
"That's where the problem is a bottleneck," he said. "What happens to those assets?"
And if those devices do end up as landfill fodder, Haskew said there could indeed be billions of pounds worth of precious metals in the ground ready to be mined by future generations, "because we'll run out of stuff!" To be clear, however, redundant devices should not be tipped into a landfill.
"Microsoft is not the baddie here," he concluded. "They've given plenty of notice... That doesn't mean there's not an environmental hazard lurking, if not managed in the right way." ®
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/14/destroy_data_company_laptops_or_else/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/16/ted_talk_electronic_waste/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/02/apple_ios_26_waste/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/28/genai_dirty_secret/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/11/electronic_waste_graveyard/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/15/worried_about_windows_10s_impending/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Please could we have some information about companies (in Britain and elsewhere) that are refurbishing formerly M$ laptops and desktops for re-use with Linux.
I got a few Thinkpads from my wife's workplace, and there are some companies that sell refurbished Thinkpads (a quick search will point you that way). Sure, there's always the issue with machines from an unknown origin (what hides in the BIOS?), so there's that. The Thinkpads just... work. They support WPA3, they are (still) fast enough for normal stuff, the keyboards of the old ones are pretty good, full selection of ports etc. I'm running Devuan on my machines, other distros will wor as well.
There is a steady market at your local Uni for old Thinkpads, and indeed older laptops in general, running a modern Linux distro. I use Slackware, and generally give 'em away to starving students.
"Microsoft is not the baddie here," he concluded. "They've given plenty of notice... "
What a ridiculous, fatuous, and downright idiotic remark. They are the baddie for obsoleting usable machines, via unreasonable hardware requirements, in the first place. If I gave 24 hours notice of the intent to murder someone, that wouldn't get me acquitted in Court.
Microsoft really ought to be held to account by government for the consequences of their stupid decisions on W11 hardware. Sadly that won't happen.
unreasonable
> They are the baddie for obsoleting usable machines, via unreasonable hardware requirements
Not merely unreasonable, but totally unnecessary in any technical sense.
-A.
Re: unreasonable
In most cases the hardware requirements are also completely fucking stupid.
I have a small fleet of second hand Intel NUC's for tinkering around with.
One of the newer ones is a NUC7i7 marked on the case as new in March 2021, so 4 and a half years old. Despite having TPM 2.0, Microsoft say Windows 11 cannot be installed as the CPU isn't supported. As far as they're concerned, this perfectly usable and performant computer is e-waste at under 5 years of age.....! Still, that's one less telemetry stream for M$ to harvest as it's happily running Debian 13 instead.
“Microsoft is not the baddie here”
Other opinions are available.
Re: “Microsoft is not the baddie here”
Is Microsoft the baddy here?
Yes.
Ask me later.
More like half of that £1.6bn
Since WEEE recovery rate is at best 57% (and only 44% from households), and I'll wager that the more valuable metals see proportionately lower recovery rates.
Re: More like half of that £1.6bn
Give it all to that sreetips bloke from youtube. He seems pretty thorough.
Disgraceful
The fact that the scrap value of all of that perfectly good IT equipment in a single country is in the billions is an utter disgrace.
Eat this, Microsoft.
14.4 million obsolete PCs in the UK. £1.6 billion...
So there's over a hundred quids' worth of gold in each and every PC? I call bollocks... someone's slipped a decimal point somewhere (as I commented on a recent similar recycling story).
New cottage industry?
The property I have in Nevada came with mineral rights, and a shit-ton of old mining equipment, including devices for separating metals from ore.
I also have a bunch of ancient, obsolete, battered and b0rken PC[0] boards of various vintages, and other detritus from several decades as a consultant in the industry.
I've been fiddling about with separating the heavies from the junk (mostly fiberglass), and have settled on first running the boards through a hammer-mill that turns them into bite-sized chunks, and then a second hammer-mill that beats on those chunks until they can fit through a 1mm screen. Follow that by a trip over a shaker table for the resulting gritty dust, and you've got a fairly reasonable way of reclaiming your gold, silver, copper, etc. Liberal application of water both keeps the dust down to a bare minimum, and moves the stuff along. The water can be recycled after passing through a settling basin, so there is minimal waste there. I am manually moving the scrap between machines, but there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to feed the output of one machine into the input of another, and adjust feed rates appropriately. Perhaps adding a magnetic separator would also be prudent ...
Note that hammer-mills are quite noisy ... your neighbors won't be happy if you decide to take this up in your shed.
Note also that smelting out the results isn't for the faint-hearted, and can involve hazardous chemicals ... but you can probably find a scrap metal dealer somewhere near you who will be willing to purchase your concentrates. I have no idea where to get rid of the fiberglass leftovers. It's considered hazmat, for what should be obvious reasons.
CPUs and RAM I keep for resale, but they can be run through with the rest. I sell old hard-drives to people who make clocks out of them. I haven't figured out what to do with power supplies yet, but they can be fed into the hammer-mills ... the only problem is the finely powdered wet steel that results rusts almost instantly, thus making a mess, and taking them apart to remove the steel costs more than the scrap value of the metals they have in them (maybe separate out the steel with magnets between the two hammer-mills?).
I have no intention of doing this for a living, I was only curious how easy it can be. The answer is apparently "very", so I'll toss it over to all y'all. If anybody wants to go urban mining, have fun.
[0] That's printed circuit, not personal computer.
Not hard
Only 2 of my heap of old laptops cannot either be forced to run 11, or to adapt to the IoT longterm version of 10. None of my elderly cousins will try Linux, so these are what they will get if ordinary 10 ever fails.
Re: Not hard
I note you use 'forced to run 11'. Those holes that allow this are being closed, so it may not be an option for long, unless you think that Win11 without security updates is any safer than Win10 without security updates.
Or we could install Linux on them and not send them to the scrap heap...