Recycling is important, yes. But even this is completely inadequate to meet our needs. We think of it as the best option to use virgin materials. In fact, it can often be one of the worst. Consider a glass bottle. To recycle it, you have to break it into pieces, melt the pieces, and mold them into a whole new bottle – an industrial process that requires a lot of energy, time, and expense.
Or you can wash and reuse it.
It's a better option—and hardly a new idea. For much of the last century, gas stations, dairies, and other companies sold products in glass bottles that they then collected, washed, and reused.
Refurbishing a phone, car battery, or solar panel requires much more energy, cost, and, as we have seen, unsafe labor than refurbishing that product. You can buy refurbished computers, phones, and even solar panels online and at some stores. But renewables are really widespread only in developing countries. If you're North American and no longer satisfied with your iPhone 8, there are plenty of people in less-wealthy countries who would be happy to take it.
There are important lessons here, and perhaps the most important is this: as we look ahead, we need to start thinking beyond simply replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and increasing the supply of raw materials. Rather, we will need to completely reshape our relationship with energy and natural resources. It may seem like a daunting task, but there are a variety of things we can do – as consumers, as voters, as human beings – to reduce the negative effects of our technological arms race.
Going forward, our critical metals will come from all types of mines, junkyards and recycling centers around the world. Some will emerge from new sources, using new methods and technologies. And the choices we make about where and how those metals are obtained, and who prospers and who suffers in the process, matter greatly. But no less important is the question of how much of all these things we actually need – and how to reduce that need.
We are lucky in one respect: we are still just at the beginning of a historic worldwide change. The main thing will be to figure out how to make it work without repeating the worst mistakes of the past.
This article is adapted from Vince Beiser Power Metal: The race for resources that will shape the futurePublished November 19 by Riverhead (an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, all rights reserved).