Recycling could play a role in increasing U.S. production of these metals.

President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order and also declared a national emergency Sept. 30 designed to expand the domestic mining industry, support mining jobs, alleviate unnecessary permitting delays and reduce U.S. dependence on China for critical minerals.

This recent executive order begins the process for the Department of the Interior to develop a program to use its authorities under the Defense Production Act (DPA) to fund mineral processing that protects U.S. national security.

According to the White House fact sheet on the order, the action is designed to accelerate the reopening and expansion of U.S. mines and processing plants.

“The United States is heavily reliant on imports of numerous critical minerals that are critical to America’s national security and economic prosperity, despite the presence of significant sources of some of these minerals across the United States,” the fact sheet reads.

The executive order follows five presidential determinations that Trump singed in July 2019 that found that domestic production of rare earth elements and materials is essential to the national defense.

China holds approximately 80 percent of the world’s rare earth element supplies, according to industry estimates.

The presidential determinations note that “the domestic production capability for” rare earth metals and alloys, heavy rare earth elements (separation and processing), light rare earth elements (separation and processing), samarium cobalt rare earth permanent magnets and neodymium iron boron rare earth sintered material and permanent magnets are “essential to the national defense.”

Prior to the presidential determinations, Trump signed Executive Order 13817, “A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals,” Dec. 20, 2017. This order included identifying critical minerals, developing faster permitting and finding new or better sources of those critical minerals.

Following that order, “the Secretary of the Interior conducted a review with the assistance of other executive departments and agencies (agencies) that identified 35 minerals that (1) are ‘essential to the economic and national security of the United States,’ (2) have supply chains that are ‘vulnerable to disruption,’ and (3) serve ‘an essential function in the manufacturing of a product, the absence of which would have significant consequences for our economy or our national security,’” the new executive order states.

The order goes on to state that these minerals are to make airplanes, computers, cellphones and advanced electronics in addition to being used in electricity generation and transmission systems. However, “For 31 of the 35 critical minerals, the United States imports more than half of its annual consumption. The United States has no domestic production for 14 of the critical minerals and is completely dependent on imports to supply its demand.”

On British Columbia-based American Manganese Inc.’s website, Larry W. Reaugh, president and chief executive officer of the company, states that the executive order “puts American Manganese in a favorable position given the company’s ability to alleviate the identified material dependencies and contribute to a solution as follows:

“The U.S. is 100 percent import-dependent on manganese and there is no substitution for manganese in the production of steel. Artillery Peak, Arizona, contains vast resources of manganese, and American Manganese holds a U.S. patent which can potentially be utilized for the production of electrolytic manganese metal (EMM) and electrolytic manganese dioxide. The company produced a prefeasibility report in 2012 on producing EMM from Artillery Peak resources. No action was taken on this pre-feasibility report due to the falling price of manganese, which was a result of overproduction in China.

“The critical materials list includes commonly used lithium-ion battery materials and American Manganese holds patents for recycling cathode materials used in lithium-ion batteries with high purity and recovery potential of lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese,” Reaugh continues.

American Manganese. focuses on recycling lithium-ion batteries with the RecycLiCo patented process that extracts cathode metals, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese and aluminum at high purity.

According to a Forbes article, if Biden wins the presidential election, he is not likely to overturn the executive order but could make mining more difficult to the advantage of recyclers like American Manganese and Geomega Resources, another Canadian company that is looking to recycle rare earth elements used in batteries. That company is building a demonstration plant in Quebec.

Two bills before the U.S. Congress also address rare earth elements: Ted Cruz’s Onshoring Rare Earths (ORE) Act and the Reclaiming American Rare Earths (RARE) Act, a companion bill introduced in the House by Reps. Lance Gooden and Vicente Gonzalez.

Cruz says, “Our ability as a nation to manufacture defense technologies and support our military is dangerously dependent on our ability to access rare earth elements and critical minerals mined, refined and manufactured almost exclusively in China. Much like the Chinese Communist Party has threatened to cut off the U.S. from life-saving medicines made in China, the Chinese Communist Party could also cut off our access to these materials, significantly threatening U.S. national security. The ORE Act will help ensure China never has that opportunity by establishing a rare earth elements and critical minerals supply chain in the U.S."

The ORE Act is designed to reduce U.S. dependence on China and establish a supply chain for rare earth elements and critical minerals in the U.S. by providing tax incentives for the rare earths industry, including expanding and making permanent full-expensing provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act; requiring the Department of Defense to source rare earth minerals and critical elements from the U.S.; and establishing grants for pilot programs to develop these materials in the U.S. that include at least 30 percent of the total amount of grants to projects relating to secondary recovery of these minerals and metals.

New York City-headquartered USA Rare Earth CEO Pini Althaus tells Forbes the company is “ready to assist” in the last area.

Forbes reports that USA Rare Earth’s processing facility in Colorado is operational and its magnet manufacturing plant should be running in 12 months. In early 2023, USA Rare Earth’s Round Top, Texas, mine also should be operational. That mine has 16 of 17 rare earth elements.

Federal $3.5 million grant will help Alabama university continue its research into the recycling of personal protective equipment.

Troy University, based in Troy, Alabama, has received a $3.5 million federal grant to help fund its research and development of methods to recycle personal protective equipment (PPE).

The production, sale and use of PPE, most commonly face masks, gloves and their packaging, has escalated in 2020 in reaction to the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Established medical waste companies such as Stericycle have been increasing their attention to the proper handling of PPE, although not necessarily focusing on recycling.

The Troy University center receiving the funding has traditionally focused on polymers and plastics research and recycling.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded Troy’s Center for Materials and Manufacturing Sciences (CMMS) a three-year grant, which the university says is the third NIST grant awarded to the CMMS.

“The first two NIST grants were to set up the lab, and this one is to fund particular research projects,” says Dr. Govind Menon, director of Troy’s School of Science and Technology. “We are entering into the academic research phase of the center. This $3.5 million goes directly to research projects.”

The funding will allow TROY to hire four staff members to focus solely on research. “These are not faculty,” says Menon. “They’re here to do research and only research.”

Menon said the CMMS research, performed in collaboration with the University of Alabama at Birmingham College of Engineering, will aim to establish a full procedure, from decontamination to applications of the resulting materials, to recycle discarded PPE.

“We have already started the PPE part of the research, and we are beginning our analysis on how to reuse the materials,” Menon said. “This is certainly important with the pandemic in mind, but it’s relevant even beyond the pandemic. Medical PPE is something people have been afraid to touch, largely because of contamination. This is absolutely vital research, otherwise the waste generated by PPE will be enormous, in addition to existing waste.”

Founded in 2018 with support from the NIST, Troy University describes the CMMS as a fully integrated multi-disciplinary research facility focusing on research into polymers and polymer recycling.

Waupaca Foundry is the first U.S. metal caster to receive the ISO 50001 Energy Management System certification.

Waupaca Foundry Inc., a Hitachi Metals group company based in Waupaca, Wisconsin, has won the 2020 Green Foundry Sustainability Award presented by the American Foundry Society (AFS), Schaumburg, Illinois, for integrating sustainable business practices throughout its manufacturing operations. The award was presented during the AFS virtual conference Oct. 5.

The company implemented the ISO 50001 Energy Management System, creating a formal management system approach to energy reduction. Foundry leaders gather and analyze data that identifies opportunities for additional energy reduction in plant operations. As compared to 2010, Waupaca reduced its energy consumption by more than 20 percent at all its U.S. plants.

Waupaca Foundry says it is the first U.S. metal caster to receive ISO 50001 Energy Management System certification. To gain the certification, the company says it created and implemented a program in energy management at its gray iron foundry Plant 1 in Waupaca and then reviewed and checked data to ensure consistent results. After 12 months of preparation and completing a verification audit by an independent registrar, the certification was granted in 2017, the company says.

Waupaca Foundry President, Chief Operating Officer and CEO Mike Nikolai says energy is one of the company’s greatest expenses, costing about $150 million in fiscal 2019 across all Waupaca Foundry locations.

“We are setting the pace in our industry by committing to continuous improvement in environmental sustainability by reducing our energy use,” Nikolai says. “Our efforts not only reduce our impact on the environment but make us a more competitive iron castings supplier in the global marketplace.”

Some of the more significant recent initiatives include:

In 2015, Waupaca Foundry was admitted to Wisconsin’s Green Tier program, which recognizes businesses with a good environmental record, a willingness to exceed regulatory requirements and an environmental management system that facilitates superior environmental performance and continuous improvements.

Additionally, Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corp. awarded Waupaca Foundry its environmental stewardship award at its annual supplier conference in 2014. In 2010, Waupaca Foundry was one of the first 32 charter companies voluntarily cutting energy consumption through 2020 in the Better Plants program, a U.S. Department of Energy initiative designed to foster energy efficiency and long-term sustainability. Since the program’s baseline year of 2009 to 2015, Waupaca Foundry says it realized a cumulative energy intensity improvement of 16.3 percent.

A leading supplier of iron castings to the automotive, commercial vehicle, agriculture, construction and industrial markets, Waupaca Foundry produces gray iron castings, ductile iron castings, HNM series high-strength ductile iron and austempered ductile iron castings. The company operates seven iron foundries in Waupaca and Marinette, Wisconsin; Tell City, Indiana; and Etowah, Tennessee. The company operates machining and assembly plants in Waupaca and in Effingham, Illinois. Waupaca Foundry is a company of Tokyo-based Hitachi Metals Ltd. and employs approximately 4,500 people.

ISRI has announced that it provided feedback to the EPA regarding its National Recycling Strategy.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a draft of its National Recycling Strategy for public input preparation for America Recycles Week and ahead of the nation’s third annual Recycling Summit.

According to a news release from the EPA, the draft identifies strategic objectives and actions needed to create “a stronger, more resilient U.S. municipal solid waste recycling system.”

“Over the last two years, we’ve heard from our partners about the challenges facing our nation’s recycling system, and in particular for municipal solid waste recycling,” says EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “Our strategy aims to move recycling in America forward by identifying actions that all of us—governments, nonprofits, private industry and the public—can take together.”

The EPA says its National Recycling Strategy draft was developed as part of its continued leadership in addressing the challenges facing the U.S. recycling system and builds on the EPA’s 2019 National Framework for Advancing the U.S. Recycling System. EPA says its strategy organizes high-level actions around three objectives to improve the U.S. recycling system, including:

EPA has shared its National Recycling Strategy draft for public comment through Dec. 4, with the goal of finalizing it in early 2021.

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), Washington, has announced that it has submitted comments to the EPA regarding this draft. In its comments, ISRI focuses on ensuring the goals and metrics developed by the EPA are clear and consistent with the current structure of the recycling industry so that recyclers may achieve economic development and job creation through enhanced manufacturer demand for recycled materials that come from a strengthened recycling system.

According to a news release from ISRI, the association is encouraging the EPA to incorporate systemwide recycling measures to assess recycling performance in its National Recycling Strategy draft. ISRI says the most effective measurement for the recycling system’s resiliency is gauging whether materials successfully pass through recycling and are consumed by manufacturers.

ISRI also has encouraged the EPA to focus its National Recycling Strategy on reducing contamination in the recycling stream. ISRI says it believes an EPA-directed, nationwide education and awareness campaign would be the “most effective means” to improving consumer understanding of the steps that need to be taken to enhance recycling and reduce contamination.

Additionally, ISRI has advised the EPA to include details on increasing material processing efficiency. ISRI says processing efficiency will improve through the amount of material that successfully passes through operations, correlating with a decline in materials sent to landfill.

Regarding end markets, ISRI tells the EPA that “recycled content … is the strongest for monitoring changes in market demand for recycled materials through changes in the amount of recycled materials that are incorporated into new products.”  

Click here to read the National Recycling Strategy and provide comments.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s committee included the waste and recycling industry in its list of recommended industries to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in Phase 2.

The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) announced Oct. 5 that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NAS) committee included the waste and recycling industry in its list of recommended industries to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in Phase 2 along with other industries identified as representing critical workers. NAS released the final report on Oct. 2 of a consensus study recommending a four-phased equitable allocation framework that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and state, tribal, local and territorial (STLT) authorities should adopt in the development of national and local guidelines for COVID-19 vaccine allocation.

NWRA was the only trade association representing the waste and recycling industry to submit comments, the association says.

“We are pleased that the NAS committee included our industry in Phase 2. The waste and recycling industry is crucial for society to function while keeping additional disease at bay. During this global pandemic, the Department of Homeland Security classified our industry as 'essential' at our urging,” NWRA President and CEO Darrell Smith says.