The
Royal Mint has partnered with Recycling Lives Services to recover gold and precious metals from UK electronic waste, creating employment and skills development opportunities for prisoners in supervised work programmes.
Through its precious metals recovery business, Reformation Metals, The Royal Mint is now receiving circuit boards from end-of-life televisions collected at civic amenity sites across the country. The e-waste is dismantled manually at
Recycling Lives’ Preston facility and through workshops before being transferred to The Royal Mint for gold and other precious metal extraction, keeping valuable materials within the UK economy.
Sean Millard, chief growth officer at The Royal Mint, said: "Recycling Lives plays a vital role in supporting our precious metals recovery work.
"We’re proud to work with such a specialised recycling business. Their feedstock has enabled us to continue sourcing high-quality precious metals from e-waste across the UK, while their social impact model adds further value to a partnership advancing a more circular economy.”
For the prisoners involved, the workshops offer more than meaningful work, as well as providing a pathway to rebuild confidence and develop transferable skills.
Adrian Murphy, chief executive officer at Recycling Lives Services, said: “By working with The Royal Mint’s Reformation Metals team, Recycling Lives Services is recovering valuable materials from UK e-waste while supporting a rehabilitation model that creates practical routes towards employment for prisoners preparing for release.”
“The Royal Mint’s commitment to ethical precious metals recovery helps make that model possible, connecting circular economy innovation with meaningful second chances.”
The partnership demonstrates The Royal Mint’s ambition to provide a more sustainable, domestic solution to tackling e-waste, whilst supporting a more resilient UK supply chain.
Each batch of circuit boards is carefully graded, itemised and verified by Recycling Lives prior to dispatch, ensuring full traceability and the consistent material quality required for precious metal recovery and recycling at The Royal Mint's facility.