Critical Minerals Recycling
Facts checked against sources on . How we check facts.
Recycling supplies very different shares of different critical minerals. Nickel recovered from scrap was about 60% of U.S. apparent nickel consumption in 2025 and purchased cobalt scrap was 25% of estimated cobalt consumption, while rare earths are recycled at a global rate below 1%. The difference follows the product: stainless steel and superalloy scrap is easy to collect and sort, and metals spread thinly through electronics and magnets are not. This section covers each waste stream and the economics behind it.
60%
of U.S. apparent nickel consumption in 2025 came from scrap, mostly stainless-steel scrap
25%
of estimated U.S. cobalt consumption in 2025 was purchased scrap
22.3%
of the 62 million tonnes of e-waste generated in 2022 was documented as properly collected and recycled
Source: Global E-waste Monitor 2024
Which waste stream does each page cover?
The pages split by where the metal comes from, because the stream decides how much is collected and what it costs to recover.
| Page | Question it answers | Key figure |
|---|---|---|
| Why Recycling Is Hard | Why do some metals recycle at scale and others barely at all? | Secondary lead 70% of U.S. lead use; no old gallium scrap recycled |
| Industrial Scrap | How much recycled metal is factory scrap? | 760,000 t of U.S. copper from new scrap against 160,000 t from old scrap |
| Urban Mining | What is recovered from used products? | 50,000 kg of palladium from U.S. catalytic converters in 2025 |
| E-Waste | What do electronics hold, and how much is recovered? | 62 Mt of e-waste in 2022; US$62 billion of recoverable resources unaccounted for |
| Magnet Recycling | Can rare earth magnets be recycled profitably? | A tonne of NdPr oxide was worth about $69,000 at the 2025 average price |
| Battery Recycling | What can be recovered from lithium-ion batteries? | Lithium recycling plants were still under construction in 2025 (USGS) |
| Recycling Economics | When does recycling pay without subsidy? | Not applicable |
| Recycling and Circularity | What does recycling add to supply, mineral by mineral? | Secondary rhenium 20,000 to 25,000 kg of 81,000 kg world production |
| Recycling Potential in Criticality Scores | How does the EU count recycling in supply risk? | EU rate 55% for copper, 0% for gallium and lithium |
Figures are taken from the linked pages, which cite USGS, the Global E-waste Monitor 2024, SMM and the EU 2023 study.
Does recycling reduce import dependence?
Recycling reduces import dependence only when it recovers end-of-life products. Factory scrap is already counted in supply, so it does not reduce a country's dependence on imports the way recovering used batteries, engines or electronics does. The EU's own measure counts only post-consumer scrap, which is why its rate for gallium is 0% even though USGS reports that new scrap from gallium arsenide manufacturing is reprocessed.
Frequently asked questions
Which critical minerals are recycled the most?
In the United States nickel recovered from scrap was about 60% of apparent consumption in 2025, secondary lead was 70% of lead consumption and purchased cobalt scrap was 25% of cobalt consumption. Rare earths are recycled at a global rate below 1%.
Why is recycling rare earths so hard?
Rare earths sit in small magnets inside many different products, which makes collection and sorting costly. Recovered neodymium-praseodymium oxide was worth about $69,000 a tonne at the 2025 average price, against about $239,000 for dysprosium oxide and about $1 million for terbium oxide, so heavy rare earths are the main prize.
How much e-waste is recycled?
The UN's Global E-waste Monitor 2024 found that 22.3% of the 62 million tonnes of e-waste generated in 2022 was documented as properly collected and recycled, leaving recoverable resources worth US$62 billion unaccounted for.
What is the difference between new and old scrap?
New scrap is leftover metal from manufacturing, while old scrap comes from products at the end of their life. USGS reports that U.S. copper recovered from scrap in 2025 was about 760,000 tonnes from new scrap and 160,000 tonnes from old scrap.
Sources
Read on October 13, 2026. Figures on this page come from these documents; where a number is an estimate, the source says so.
- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: nickel and cobalt. Other recycling shares are cited on the linked pages
- UN, ITU and UNITAR: The Global E-waste Monitor 2024
- SMM analysis of global rare earth recycling (August 2026). Trade press analysis; the rate is an SMM estimate
