Recycling can’t meet short term spikes in demand --- mining still required
Gramling, 23 --- Ph.D. in marine geochemistry from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Earth & Climate writer at Science News (JANUARY 11, 2023 AT 11:00 AM, Carolyn, “Rare earth mining may be key to our renewable energy future. But at what cost?We take you inside Mountain Pass, the only rare earth mine in the United States,” https://www.sciencenews.org/article/rare-earth-mining-renewable-energy-future, JMP)) ***Note - Saleem Ali is an environmental planner at the University of Delaware
Given the concerns over new mining, environmental think tanks like the World Resources Institute have been calling for more recycling of existing rare earth materials to reduce the need for new mining and processing.
“The path to the future has to do with getting the most out of what we take out of the ground,” says Bustamante, of the NRDC. “Ultimately the biggest lever for change is not in the mining itself, but in the manufacturing, and what we do with those materials at the end of life.”
That means using mined resources as efficiently as possible, but also recycling rare earths out of already existing materials. Getting more out of these materials can reduce the overall environmental impacts of the mining itself, she adds.
That is a worthwhile goal, but recycling isn’t a silver bullet, Ali says. For one thing, there aren’t enough spent rare earth–laden batteries and other materials available at the moment for recycling. “Some mining will be necessary, [because] right now we don’t have the stock.” And that supply problem, he adds, will only grow as demand increases.