[tastyfreeze]

Depends on what you are trying to recover. Recovering precious metals from electronics is no more difficult than processing precious metal ore.

[wongarsu]

Which comes back around to logistics and scale: refining ore is cheap because ore is delivered on multiple 300t haul trucks or in giant trains

[frankus]

I wonder if part of it is also that mining companies are generally allowed to just leave their tailings in a big pile near the mine rather than have to responsibly dispose of the majority of the ore that has no (or negative) commercial value.