The Gold That Comes Back: recycling, scrap and the second mine
Gold recycling is the part of the gold market almost nobody sees, and it is enormous. In 2025 the world's refiners took in 1,404 tonnes of recycled gold, according to the World Gold Council, the highest level since 2012. That is more than a quarter of all the gold that reached the market that year. Most of it did not come out of the ground. It came out of drawers, jewellery boxes and old circuit boards, and it came back because gold, unlike almost everything else we make, does not wear out.
Nothing is used up
Start with the stock, because it explains everything else. The World Gold Council estimates that at the end of the second quarter of 2026 there were 222,600 tonnes of gold above ground, worth about 29.0 trillion dollars. About 99,700 tonnes of that, some 45 per cent, is jewellery. Bars and coins account for about 47,800 tonnes and central banks for about 39,000.
Set that against a year's digging. The Council puts 2025 mine production at 3,672 tonnes; the US Geological Survey estimates 3,300. On either figure, the gold already above ground is somewhere between sixty and sixty seven years of mine output. That is our own arithmetic, and it is the point: the world's biggest gold deposit is not in Nevada or the Witwatersrand. It is in the hands of the people who already own it.
The second mine
The Council's supply table has three lines: mine production, net producer hedging, and recycling. In 2025 total supply reached 5,002 tonnes, the highest in its annual series back to 1970. Recycling supplied 1,404 of those tonnes, roughly 28 per cent. It is fair to call it a second mine. It has no shaft and no licence to dig. It opens when owners decide to sell.
At the gold price we read from our own markets feed at 07:04 UTC on 17 September 2026, 4,313.10 dollars an ounce or 103.52 pounds a gram, last year's recycled gold would be worth about 145 billion pounds. Again, that is our arithmetic on the Council's tonnage, dated so you can check it.
Why people sell, and why they are not selling now
You might expect recycling to surge whenever the price hits a record. Sometimes it does. In the first quarter of 2026, as the price set multiple new highs, recycling rose to 366 tonnes, up 5 per cent on a year earlier. Then in the second quarter, as the price corrected, it fell to 326 tonnes, down 6 per cent year on year and 13 per cent on the quarter.
The fall was not even. The Council records recycling in India down 17 per cent year on year, China down 15 per cent and the Middle East down 13 per cent. Europe went the other way, up 9 per cent, and the United States rose 5 per cent.
The Council's own explanation is the most interesting sentence in its latest report. Looking ahead, it says "Recycling is expected to rise only modestly, constrained by expectations of further price appreciation, limited near-market stocks and an absence of widespread economic distress." In plain words, people who own gold are holding it. They think it is going higher, much of what they were willing to part with has already gone, and nobody is being forced to sell. The Council adds that a sharp increase in selling back looks unlikely unless the second half brings a decisive price move or broader economic stress.
That tells you something about gold that a price chart does not. The owners of the second mine are not traders chasing a number. They sell when life requires it, and they keep the metal when it does not.
The gold inside your old phone
Not all recycled gold was ever jewellery. The US Geological Survey estimates that electrical and electronics account for about 7 per cent of global gold consumption. Most of that gold is never recovered. The Global E-waste Monitor 2024, published by the ITU and UNITAR, found that a record 62 million tonnes of electronic waste was produced in 2022, that less than a quarter of it, 22.3 per cent, was documented as properly collected and recycled, and that 62 billion dollars of recoverable natural resources went unaccounted for. It expects e-waste to reach 82 million tonnes by 2030.
This is where Britain's oldest company has stepped in. In 2024 the Royal Mint unveiled a 3,700 square metre factory at its site in south Wales, using patented chemistry from the Canadian company Excir to extract gold from printed circuit boards in minutes, at room temperature. The Mint says it can process up to 4,000 tonnes of circuit boards a year and produces gold of 999.9 purity, already used in its 886 jewellery collection. The factory was part of a wider change: with cash use declining, the Mint closed its Overseas Currency division and offered all 230 staff roles in new areas, including this plant. Its chief executive, Anne Jessopp, said: "I am proud that we are safeguarding The Royal Mint for another 1,100 years."
A mint that made its name striking money is now mining old laptops. The metal is the same metal.
What the scrap trade proves
The United States gives a sense of scale in a mature market. The Geological Survey estimates that in 2025 about 90 tons of new and old scrap was recycled there, equivalent to about 60 per cent of reported consumption. It also records that the US Department of War runs a government wide programme to recover precious metals from its own scrap. Governments do not run salvage programmes for things that lose their value.
That is the quiet argument this whole series keeps returning to. A banknote wears out and is shredded. A bond matures and is gone. A ring made two hundred years ago can be melted, refined and struck into a bar tomorrow, and the gold in it will be worth exactly what gold is worth. As we showed in Brown's Bottom, the metal does not change; only opinions about it do. And as The Vaults Refill sets out, the institutions have noticed.
There is one honest caution. Recycling returns the metal, not the history. A hallmarked antique that goes into the crucible loses the marks that told you who made it, where and when, which is why we care so much about them, as our piece on the history of UK hallmarking explains. Melt is a floor, not always the best use.
If you have gold you no longer wear, our Sell with Chapman page explains how we buy, and The Gold Price shows the live metal value. Nothing here is financial advice, and every figure above carries its date and source so you can check it yourself.