Switzerland alone loses about 43 kg of gold a year through its wastewater plants. We wait at the other end.
Everything that gets flushed ends up at the plant. Slide the sieve under the pipes and catch the gold. Catch the junk and you clog it. Three clogs and the shift is over.
Gold falls through the pipes. Junk falls with it. Slide the sieve and keep it clean.
Gold ends up in pipes, ash and toilets more often than you would think. These are all reported, with links.
Researchers at the Swiss water institute Eawag looked at 64 wastewater plants. They found about 43 kg of gold and 3,000 kg of silver passing through every year, each worth around 1.5 million Swiss francs. Some sludge in Ticino held enough gold that recovery might pay off. Overall, they said it was scarcely worthwhile.
Source: Eawag ↗
In Suwa, Nagano, ash from incinerated sewage sludge held 1,890 grams of gold per tonne. Ore at the Hishikari mine runs 20 to 40 grams per tonne. The local government had collected about 5 million yen so far, and the likely source was nearby precision equipment makers.
Source: Reuters via Globe and Mail ↗
Five men drove two stolen vehicles through locked gates before dawn on 14 September 2019, got in through a window and ripped the toilet from the wall. It was insured for $6 million. Years later two men were convicted and one pleaded guilty. The gold was never recovered.
Source: Reuters via Fox News ↗
A cleaning crew at Kolkata airport found two bags in a toilet compartment of a Jet Airways plane that had arrived from Patna. Inside were 24 one-kilo gold bars worth more than a million dollars. Nobody claimed them and no arrests were made.
Source: AFP via Bangkok Post ↗Grams of gold per tonne. One of these is a working mine.
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The ring, the tooth, the toilet. If you are going to wait at the end of a pipe, wait with a sieve.
