WD Launches HDD Recycling Process That Reclaims Rare Earth Elements, Cuts Out China (tomshardware.com) 33
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: While most people enjoy PCs that are powered by SSDs, mechanical hard drives are still king in the datacenter. When these drives reach the end of their useful lives, they are usually shredded, and the key materials they're made of -- including several rare earth elements (REE) -- end up as e-waste. At the same time, countries are mining these same materials and emitting a lot of greenhouse gases in the process. And China, a major source of REE, recently announced export restrictions on seven of them, potentially limiting the U.S. tech industry's access to materials such as dysprosium, which is necessary for magnetic storage, motors, and generators.
[On Thursday], Western Digital announced that it has created a large-scale hard disk drive recycling program in concert with Microsoft and recycling-industry partners CMR (Critical Materials Recycling) and PedalPoint Recycling. The new process reclaims Rare Earth Oxides (REO) containing dysprosium, neodymium, and praseodymium from hard drives, along with aluminum, steel, gold, palladium, and copper. The REO reclamation takes place completely within the U.S. and those materials go back into the U.S. market.
Dubbed the Advanced Recycling and Rare Earth Material Capture Program, WD's initiative has already saved 47,000 pounds worth of hard drives, SSDs, and caddies from landfills or less-effective recycling programs. WD was able to achieve a more than 90% reclaim rate for REE and an 80% rate for all of the shredded material. The drives came from Microsoft's U.S. data centers where they were first shredded and then sent to PedalPoint for sorting and processing. Magnets and steel were then sent to CMR, which uses its acid-free dissolution recycling (ADR) technology to extract the rare earth elements.
[On Thursday], Western Digital announced that it has created a large-scale hard disk drive recycling program in concert with Microsoft and recycling-industry partners CMR (Critical Materials Recycling) and PedalPoint Recycling. The new process reclaims Rare Earth Oxides (REO) containing dysprosium, neodymium, and praseodymium from hard drives, along with aluminum, steel, gold, palladium, and copper. The REO reclamation takes place completely within the U.S. and those materials go back into the U.S. market.
Dubbed the Advanced Recycling and Rare Earth Material Capture Program, WD's initiative has already saved 47,000 pounds worth of hard drives, SSDs, and caddies from landfills or less-effective recycling programs. WD was able to achieve a more than 90% reclaim rate for REE and an 80% rate for all of the shredded material. The drives came from Microsoft's U.S. data centers where they were first shredded and then sent to PedalPoint for sorting and processing. Magnets and steel were then sent to CMR, which uses its acid-free dissolution recycling (ADR) technology to extract the rare earth elements.
So.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Great, but why weren't they doing this before now? Were these rare Earth metals cheap enough to source that it wasn't cost-effective for them to reclaim them, until now?
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Great, but why weren't they doing this before now? Were these rare Earth metals cheap enough to source that it wasn't cost-effective for them to reclaim them, until now?
Presumably?
So ... it's almost as if tariffs changed the incentives involved? (ducks)
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Both increased prices and need so high that they found it smarter to recycle them.
To note, there have always been drive recycling programs.
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Also, remember that rare earth elements aren't that rare. There actually were mines in the U.S. that mined for them. The U.S. mines closed down because it was cheaper to export the mining to China. We had the benefit of getting cheaper Rare Earth Elements while exporting all the harm of mining them to China.
Now we can mine them in the U.S. if we want to (at a cost significantly higher that getting them from China) and get to make more sick people in the U.S., bolstering the U.S. health care industry. An
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What if we just sell more bonds, to the Fed if necessary, to raise everyone's incomes in line with inflation? Why are you all still enamored with Volcker's anti-COLA mood affiliation? Where's the harm in inflation adaptation?
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Also, remember that rare earth elements aren't that rare. There actually were mines in the U.S. that mined for them. The U.S. mines closed down because it was cheaper to export the mining to China. We had the benefit of getting cheaper Rare Earth Elements while exporting all the harm of mining them to China.
You are correct. China was not only able to mine rare earths cheaper than everyone else, the government put a program in place to sell them below the cost over 20 years ago. That allowed them to become the sole source for rare earths and put just about everyone else out of the business.
Now we can mine them in the U.S. if we want to (at a cost significantly higher that getting them from China) and get to make more sick people in the U.S., bolstering the U.S. health care industry. And if the sick miners and their families don't have health insurance, they can just go to the hospitals and get treated for free (*).
Ah, so you're OK with people getting sick as long as they're not American?
(*) Well,l it's not free. They will be charged and just not pay the bill. Then the hospital eats the cost and raises the cost of other things so that it doesn't go bankrupt. It's the American way. :-)
Actually in a lot of cases, yes you can get treated for free. That's why most hospitals are classified as non profit and don't pay taxes. They are requ
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Re:So.... (Score:5, Informative)
No, tariffs are a coincidence. TFA says they started the recycling programme in 2023.
To get their recycling program up and running, WD and its partners went through 18 months of testing, with the initial study period beginning in 2023 and ending in December 2024 Now the company is working with more partners.
Re: So.... (Score:2)
Yes, just like it hasn't been worth it to mine them here because of the environmental costs, which we have been pushing off onto China instead. We have them here, we just don't want to dig them up and refine them.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They are an environmental disaster to mine and process. But China was willing to destroy its part of the world to sell them to the US for cheap.
Now with a trade war and the gutting of the EPA, we can rejoice as we will do it here instead.
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What if we paid companies to do the right thing by the environment as they extract and build in recycling from the start of the design process?
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Great, but why weren't they doing this before now? Were these rare Earth metals cheap enough to source that it wasn't cost-effective for them to reclaim them, until now?
To build up a decade plus pile of recyclable junk to mine?
The whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. Gallium has no primary ore. You recover it from aluminum smelting "mud". We smelt a lot of aluminum, we just don't bother to process the mud because the paperwork and manpower is (was) too expensive. Similar deal with many of the others.
The rest will require us to open some mines. Mining! OMG! The horror!!! ... Of having our environmental footprint on our continent... Consider... If we can do it better/c
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Mining! OMG! The horror!!!
I don't know how old you are, but growing up as a kid in the early '70s, it was hammered home that we were shitting on our planet. And we were. Burning rivers, and polluted waters, anyone? Toxic waste dumps? Smog? Lead exhaust everywhere? The problem with mining is that environmental issues and safety are usually given little to no consideration: they're not in the forefront of mine owners' interests. Whatever the hidden costs of those factors are, we're all paying them.
If we can do it better/cleaner than China, even if it costs a bit more
That "if" is carrying a lot
Re:So.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Because normally everytime something like this or another party starts up REE mining happens, China crashes the market by dumping REEs onto it at well under what it costs for them to to mine them. Tariffs effectively nullify that tactic.
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Yes. Rare earths are not that rare and not that expensive. The problem is the _infrastructure_ to get them out of the ground and refine them a) takes long to build and b) requires cheap labor to be cost effective.
The second problem is that China may actually stop to export rare earths to the US and anybody that will trade them to the US in turn. And that makes recycling apparently cost effective.
cuts out China? (Score:2)
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Now all that "cost" is going to come home to roost.. so people are taking a look at at least softening the blow.. but no matter what, someone is going to pay it... China is large enough that it can absorb some of that human/environmental cost.. but even they long term have been
Oh no... China cut you off? (Score:2)
Maybe buy the REE's from Australia then?
That'll back-fire China's price suppression it's put on Australia's mining industry.
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Reuse the magnets (Score:5, Insightful)
It would make much more sense to take out the magnets from the old drive and put it into a new one than to shred them just to recycle the dust into new magnets.
Landfill HDD? (Score:3)
There is at least one HDD in Newport, Wales landfill that could be shredded.
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What if your income went up by the same amount so your real purchasing power remained constant?
Hold up! (Score:2)
Where do I send them? (Score:2)
I have probably 100 old hard drives (maybe even more) laying around spanning at least 40 years (MFM, RLL, ESDI, SCSI, IDE, SATA). I used to make platter clocks out of them but people got sick of getting them for Xmas. I have no recycling center close by so they've just been accumulating. Since the advent of SSD and XTIDE for vintage systems I have no need to pick through them any longer. If you pay for shipping Western Digital you can have all of them. I'm sure other 30+ year PC techs have similar HDD piles
Washing Machines next? (Score:1)
The USA is sounding like it is Russia under sanctions.