Americans Have the Power to Confront China’s Rare Earth Stranglehold
In the years leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, America sold millions of tons of its scrap metal to a nation that would return that metal as bombs and bullets targeting American GIs.
So it is important to ask the question: where and why is America now either burying in landfills or sending overseas its valuable electronic waste, when every smartphone, laptop, EV battery, and flat screen contains valuable elements that would help our nation free itself from its dependence on Chinese exports of crucial rare earth elements?
Globally, experts say electronic waste is one of the fastest-growing waste streams, yet they acknowledge only about 17% is currently being recycled. Washington is apparently aware of the issue, but there has yet to be a bipartisan consensus on how to address the problem. Individual states are proposing mandated guidelines for e-waste disposal, but to truly meet this challenge requires a comprehensive national policy.
E-waste experts say there are several initiatives that would allow America to capture far more of its critical metals for reuse. These programs include incentivizing companies such as Apple to design their products to be easily disassembled, as opposed to current smartphones that are almost impossible to open. If you cannot actually get to the metals that need to be recycled, then every program attempting to recycle e-waste will fail.
Japan and South Korea currently have laws that place the burden for recycling e-waste on the companies that manufacture electronics. While that policy would likely meet with resistance in a nation that is seeking less, not more, cumbersome legislation, there need to be far more rigorous recycling streams here in America. Only then can we capture discarded devices and retrieve the significant amounts of gold, silver, platinum, lithium and rare earth elements that are hidden within them.
We should long ago have learned our lesson about sending mineral resources to enemy nations in the years leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Today, whether it is through retail partnerships, municipal drop-off centers, or even mail-in programs, American consumers can play an active role in preventing China from using its rare earth deposits as a strategic weapon to be used against our nation.
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