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Japan Begins Recycling Rare Earth Metals From Electronics
Black Gold Alchemist writes "Dowa, a Japanese mining company in Kosaka, has begun the recycling of rare earth metals from used cellphones and computers. This is in response to a recent, temporary trade embargo from China, which is the leading supplier of rare earth metals needed for production of products including hybrid cars, wind turbines, and LCD screens. Because of the shortage of rare earth metals, Japanese trade minister Akihiro Ohata is asking the government to include a rare earth strategy in its supplementary budget for this year."
should have been doing this ages ago, but yet again, no pressure to do so while supplies were cheap
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Well, this goes to show how much of electronics recycling is a gimmick and publicity stunt.
Separating rare earths out of electronics waste is actually not that difficult: hit it with acid; do some basic purification first to get rid of Fe, Cu and a few other "usual suspects"; after that ion exchange chromatography does the deed. Even without initial mechanical separation there should be enough of them in the acid effluent. The fact that it was not done shows how much are we really "recycling" there.
In fact, we should say thank you to China on this one. This may finally make EU, USA and Japan governments put some money behind the electronic waste disposal laws.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
The technology has been around for years. I guess what is new is that the suits no longer see it as a "green" thing but as a necessary supply line.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
What this suggests is that there should be a middle ground between dumping stuff in a landfill and recycling it. We should be segregating material that we don't currently recycle or doesn't make economic sense to recycle, but might become scarce in the future. That will make it easier to recycle when we need it.
Sadly this is the way we overcome our big problems. Not by foresight, predictions and educated action. The shit has to start hitting the fan to get people moving in the right direction. I mean this whole rare earth situation has been foreseen. It was obvious that China was building a monopoly years ago. The same thing happens with the coming helium shortage, energy problems, global warming, you name it. It really has to get nasty for people to do something about these things.
In fact, we should say thank you to China on this one.
Recent news reports have Japan accusing China of this being over a territorial dispute. The traders are saying that things have resumed but that this is just an excuse for China to harass traders and outbound exports with "preshipment" checks. China denies this has anything to do with the dispute but the timing is more than a bit suspect and why is this only directed at Japan?
I don't know how much of an net positive environmental impact recycling rare earths from circuitry provides (is your acid economically and environmentally friendly? what are the byproducts? are they less damaging than the circuitry to the environment?) but I don't think it's wise to thank countries for exacerbating a territorial dispute. The world has enough of those now, we don't need another escalation or spat between countries.
My work here is dung.
I have three old hard drives. When can Japan pick them up?
I'm pretty sure you were making a joke, but the best option is to get off your ass and take them to your local recycler (the EPA has a partial list). I find that a lot of people who crow about how important that we recycle our waste, that is, how other people should recycle their waste, can't be bothered to actually take care of recycling their own crap.
As with everything else, reuse is most always better than recycling.
Royalty-free standards should be created for battery shapes and connectors, and a garbage tax should be placed on non-standard batteries.
Interchangeable parts were key to the industrial revolution. Sometimes we forget.