$ I L V E R...........thrown out.

[Ambro51]

Can you imagine the amount of Silver down the drain or flushed away as exhausted fixer since Photography began?

 

[raydm6]

Looks like silver recovery is being looked at scientifically using various methods.

Here's an answer.. ...I think... Interesting paper...

Removal of silver from photographic wastewater effluent using Acinetobacter baumannii BL54
https://www.researchgate.net/publica...baumannii_BL54

And another (this could be in response to silver plating):
Bioelectrochemical recovery of silver from wastewater with sustainable power generation and its reuse for biofouling mitigation
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...59652619324047

There's more out there.

 

[EarlJam]

My dad had connections within SPSE (now IS&T) and was told once that Kodak, in its heyday, paid the bulk of its fixed costs with silver recovery. I suspect other major still and motion picture film labs did the same.

 

[Einstein]

A family with two photographic stores and one wet lab in Alabama showed me the silver ingot they had just gotten from their years reclamation. It was about a LB in weight. Told me they got one every year but this was back in the mid 90’s So I doubt they do any wet processing now. They stopped doing 120 slides and so I ended up going to Atlanta, that lab was called E6 and that was a huge operation but sadly they closed down years ago.

 

[Retro-Grouch]

When I was in school, we were pretty good about doing silver recovery in the Photo Department's darkrooms. In theory, what we recovered was meant to be recycled back into supplies, but things were pretty lax. I do recall that the funds often went to buy beer for the work study students who maintained the operations (ask me how I know!). At least the silver didn't go down the drain.

 

[ranger9]

The really big users (printing plants and motion picture processors) haven't been throwing out silver for many years. It was classified as a pollutant and they were barred from dumping it into wastewater. That forced everyone to start saving their fixer and sending it to recyclers. A common sight when touring printing plants in the late 20th Century was a storeroom full of plastic jugs of used fixer waiting to go to the recycler. Digital platemaking has replaced a lot of this now, of course.

 

[rulnacco]

That recycling thing was a pretty good racket. A friend of mine was showing me one time a silver ingot he was gifted by a friend of his. This guy had the contract with several hospitals to recycle their fixer that was used in the processing of X-ray plates. (Man, talk about a *lot* of used fixer! I'm sure the radiology labs used to produce loads of it regularly.) He charged them to haul off their toxic waste, and then he removed the silver from it and sold that, too. Making it at both ends, definitely a profitable operation.

 

[neal3k]

I was in the USAF in the late 60s as a photo interpreter and worked next to the photo lab. I watched the lab guys open the silver recovery unit once and scrape out the silver. I don't remember the amount or frequency but it had to be a lot of silver because our aircraft used 4.5" and 9" rolls about 250 feet? long film in large quantities as it was a reconnaissance training base. The developing generated lots of silver and I think the finished film was shipped off base for silver recovery.