Do you have a drawer — or perhaps a whole garage — piled with old or broken electronic devices left to languish after you’ve upgraded? You’re not alone. And you are sitting on a gold mine, or maybe something even more valuable.
Rare-earth elements are an essential component of smartphones, computers and tablets, as well as many industrial, defence and energy applications, especially wind turbines.
There are 15 or 17 of these elements, depending on how you count, and they’re not actually all that rare — just complicated, expensive and environmentally destructive to mine. The vast majority come from China. This has led to worries they could become a trump card, so to speak, in the ongoing U.S.-China trade war.
Some experts have speculated rare-earth elements may be one reason behind U.S. President Donald Trump’s sudden and fierce desire to buy Greenland, an Arctic island nation that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The U.S. recently signed a memorandum with Greenland to support the country’s development of rare-earth mining. Greenland has reserves of terbium, dysprosium, neodymium and praseodymium, among other rare earths.
There’s good reason for governments to be concerned about securing supplies of rare earths in the decades to come. If current trends continue, at least six essential elements used to make smartphones will run out within 100 years, Britain’s Royal Chemistry Society warns.
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