Your smartphone. The MRI machine at a hospital. Precision-guided missiles.
Those are just some of the many modern technologies that share small but vital components called critical minerals. And currently, China has a near-monopoly on the entire supply chain for most of them.
But what if we got those minerals another way: by recycling our old iPhones, computers, and so many other products? As it turns out, that idea is already a reality in Michigan and other places — but it’s not as straightforward as it sounds.
“We cannot and should not be at the mercy of China”
Think back to your high school chemistry class, and the periodic table. Sixty of those little boxes represent what the U.S. government has named “critical minerals.”
The government says they’re strategically important — and that the most important are what are known as "rare earth elements."
Abigail Hunter directs the Center for Strategy at a non-profit called Securing America's Future Energy, focused on U.S. energy and supply chain security. Hunter said rare earth elements are tiny, but some have tremendously powerful magnetic properties, which make them key components in everything from consumer electronics to military hardware.
“Modern technologies, the way we move around, the way our military is able to defend our country — [all of that] is based on, essentially, access to these minerals,” Hunter said.
But there’s a problem: China controls almost everything from mining and refining rare earth minerals, to making those vital magnets. That means that if China restricts critical mineral exports — as indeed it has within the past year — it could spell major trouble for the U.S. economy and national security. And that worries a lot of the country’s lawmakers.
Michigan Congresswoman Haley Stevens is one of them. The Oakland County Democrat said the U.S. needs to do for critical minerals what it did for semiconductors and microchips under the Biden administration: make some big moves to bring that supply chain back onshore.
“That’s what I want to see,” Stevens said. “With critical minerals, we cannot and should not be at the mercy of China.”
Stevens said that’s why she introduced legislation to bolster the domestic critical mineral supply chain in Michigan and the U.S. last year. The Unearth America’s Future Act would use the tax code, public-private partnerships, and other means to promote bringing more of that production and refining capacity back to this country.
But what about all those smartphones and other products we have with critical minerals already in them? Couldn’t recycling them help us get at least partway toward reducing our dependence on China?
Stevens’ answer to that question is a resounding yes. But, she added: “This isn't necessarily 20th-century recyclability. These are more complex processes that take actual products and bring them back down to their mineral form.”
Recycling scales up, but barriers and disincentives remain
At Cirba Solutions’ facility in Wixom, a warehouse worker in gloves and safety glasses sorts alkaline batteries — the regular household batteries of the AA and AAA form that we’re all familiar with — into boxes. The company has been operating in this particular location since 2019.
But spokesperson Danielle Spaulding said Cirba first started about 35 years ago in Michigan, and has since spread across six states. Its customers run the gamut. “Basically all major automotive OEMs. Battery manufacturers. We partner with healthcare, telecommunications, and municipalities,” said Spaulding.
Spaulding said Cirba is doing exactly the kind of thing that Stevens is talking about. She uses lithium-ion batteries, the type that often powers electric vehicles, as an example of what that process looks like.
First, the battery gets shredded. Then its various other component materials, like copper and plastic, are separated out. Then comes a chemical leaching process, which yields what the company is really after: something called black mass, which Spaulding described as “that beautiful cathode part where the critical minerals [that] lie within the battery come out.”
Spaulding said Cirba was the first in the country to produce black mass on a commercial scale starting in 2015. The company has received several U.S. Department of Energy grants, including a $200 million grant for a battery recycling plant in South Carolina that the Trump administration recently put under review. (Spaulding said that particular grant has “been through all the reviews,” and “we're happy to say all of our projects have continued to move forward.")
For now at least, there’s no sense that recycling can totally replace mining for new critical mineral supplies. But Spaulding said there’s hope to create more “closed loop” supply chains: for batteries used in, say, the new data centers that help power artificial intelligence. “And that way, we can ensure that those materials they're producing will be able to be used over and over and over again,” she said, cutting down on the need for new imports of the minerals.
But there are some complications. Rare earth metals usually make up very, very small parts of much larger products. And the magnetism that makes them so valuable also makes separating them out a painstaking process — all to yield just a tiny amount. So many recyclers choose to forego that, SAFE’s Abigail Hunter said.
“Economically and technologically, it can be a little bit of a disincentive for us to prioritize getting those things out, from just the base case scenario of how we recycle things today,” Hunter said. “We also aren't great at having a robust ecosystem of recycling in the United States.”
All of this will be a focus of high-level conversation in Washington, D.C., this week. That’s where Secretary of State Marco Rubio is hosting a Critical Minerals Summit with representatives from other countries that are also looking to break China’s grip on the supply chain.
