Seeker explains the environmental issues and solutions involving rare earth elements

Yesterday, Seeker uploaded a video that asked These Rare Elements Are Key to Renewable Energy, But What If They Run Out?

Turns out, green technologies might not be so green. Rare earth elements used in these technologies have a big environmental impact, but there are some solutions.
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Renewable technologies like solar panels, electric cars, and wind farms may move us toward a more sustainable future. But the problems caused by one of their key ingredients could jeopardize it all. Luckily, nature has provided us some pretty cool solutions that, if we can take advantage of them, just might save the day.

I’m talking about rare earth elements, or REEs, a group of 17 metallic elements on the periodic table. And not only do green technologies depend on them, but they’re key parts of most electronics: smart phones, computer hard drives, digital cameras, and more—plus things like medical imaging machines, lasers, and aerospace components.

Many of these elements are so useful because they’re easy to magnetise and they hold on to that magnetic-ness even in solid form. Elements like neodymium, terbium, indium, and others are essential to solar panels and wind turbines, and a recent study showed that in order to keep up with demand for these technologies, we’ll need to produce 12 times as much of these REEs by 2050.

This video touches on three lessons I teach my students, all of which connect to Commoner's Laws. First, there is no free lunch when it comes to resources that have to be mined. Mining causes a lot of environmental damage, as the video shows. The pollution itself is an example of everything must go somewhere; there is no "away."

Second, everything is connected to everything else, in this case through the global supply chain. In particular, that the U.S. is 100% dependent on imported rare earths, particularly from China, leaves us vulnerable to China threatening to restrict exports of rare earths, which could seriously impede our high-technology and green economies. I tell both my geology and environmental science students about that every semester.

The last lesson is a hopeful one based on nature knows best. As I noted in Seeker and CNBC examine the hidden environmental costs of electric cars and how to reduce them by recycling, recycling mimics natural chemical cycling in the environment. In that entry, technology used chemical and physical processes to extract lithium and other batter components. Seeker's video comes even closer to nature by showing how bacteria can help recycle rare earth elements. That's an even better example of both nature knows best and part of another of Commoner's Laws, there is no waste in nature.

I found this such an informative video, I think I'll show this to my students next semester. Once again, welcome to blogging as professional development.