Highlights
- U.S. companies like Glencore and Redwood Materials are increasing rare earth element recovery from electronic waste.
- Despite optimistic narratives, large-scale rare earth oxide separation remains technically challenging and economically unproven.
- Recycling rare earth elements is essential but will not replace traditional mining in the near future.
A recent article (opens in a new tab) by Jai Hamid, titled “U.S. Eyes Old Tech as Ammo in Rare Earth Fight with China”, paints an energetic picture of a booming U.S. rare earth recycling sector. But how much of this narrative holds up under scrutiny—and how much is speculative spin?
On the Money
The Cryptopolitan (opens in a new tab) article correctly highlights that U.S. recyclers—like Glencore (opens in a new tab), Cyclic Materials (opens in a new tab), Illumynt (opens in a new tab), and Redwood Materials (opens in a new tab)—are ramping up efforts to extract valuable metals, including rare earth elements (REEs), from e-waste. Kunal Sinha (opens in a new tab) of Glencore accurately notes the long-overlooked potential of recycling. The piece also correctly reports the Department of Defense’s equity stake in MP Materials and China’s April 2025 export restrictions on rare earth magnets, which strained global supply chains.
Drifting Away
While the urgency of recycling is real, the article conflates general metals recycling (copper, gold, aluminum) with REE-specific capability. Most e-waste recyclers focus on high-yield, high-margin base and precious metals. Rare earths like neodymium or terbium, while present in e-waste (e.g. hard drives), exist in minute quantities, and extracting them economically at scale remains challenging.
The claim that “the race is on” for rare earth recovery from e-waste skips over the reality that many facilities are still in early build-out stages. Illumynt, for instance, is harvesting rare earths from hard drives—but large-scale commercial volumes remain unverified.
Also a critical fact is skipped: the U.S. currently lacks domestic capacity for separating individual rare earth oxides from recycled material at any scaled level. Until separation is solved—either via solvent extraction, chromatography, or ion-exchange—much of the “recycled REE” narrative remains aspirational.
There’s a clear political undertone. The narrative pegs Trump-era tariffs and Biden’s MP Materials grant as twin pillars of America’s anti-China REE strategy, framing recycling as a fast alternative to slow mining. While partially true, this obscures structural limitations. Sinha’s late caution—“Don’t invest on the hype”—gets buried under breathless headlines.
Final Thoughts
Recycling is essential, but it won’t replace mining anytime soon. We are in the first inning of a nine inning baseball game. Investors should see through the e-waste gold rush headlines and assess fundamentals: material yields, separation tech, and customer offtakes. At Rare Earth Exchanges™ (REEx), we separate signal from spin—because rare earths are too strategic to hype.
See more at REEx Forum (opens in a new tab).
There is an Australian company called Ionic Rare Earths ASX code IXR which is soon to begin building a recovery plant in Belfast Nthn Ireland to supply Ford Motor Company in England. The UK government will soon announce this month the extent of theif funding for the project. Your article today made no mention of this proven recovery method albeit at small scale but it has been proven to work. The recent nes from MP in the USA underscores that prices of RE’s recovered outside of China will have to rise in order to be financially viable. IXR will thrive in that sort of environment.
Cheers Tim Stenhouse