SESSION #1 – From the Earth to the Screen—How much soil must be moved for a screen?

What quantities of valuable metals needed for the production of electronic devices such as PC screens are contained in an average soil? To obtain 50 mg of indium, one tonne of earth would have to be excavated [1]. An LCD screen contains about 250 mg of indium [2]. Thus, an excavation of 5 tonnes of average earth mass would be necessary to produce a single LCD screen. Assuming that this amount of excavated earth mass is now to be transported in order to extract the valuable indium from it, one would need a 12-ton truck that can load a maximum of 6 tonnes [3]. To equip an office building with 36 workplaces with one screen each, one would need 36 trucks loaded with earth containing the indium.

1 https://www.chemie.de/news/1159110/seltene-metalle-im-elektronikschrott.html
2 https://www.hlnug.de/fileadmin/dokumente/abfall/ressourcenschutz/Metall/Verwertung_von__LCD-Bildschirmen_Internet_7_1_2019__003_.pdf 
3 https://www.bussgeldkataloge.de/zuladung-lkw/