It seems that the mining industry is always in the news, but it’s not always in the news for the right reasons. In the last couple of years we’ve seen the mining industry become the whipping boy for unions and regulators, along with all their lawyers. We’ve seem coal mining accidents, trapped coalminers, and environmental disasters concerning mining. No, things in the United States have been pretty mellow, but around the world it often seems as if there is a coal mining accident at least every couple of weeks involving many deaths.

And, there have been many issues with the rising cost of metals and Rare Earth Elements or REEs, although lately those high-priced commodities have gotten a little break. Many countries that are less than stellar with the United States on the diplomatic front hold many of the very important minerals and elements that we need for our high-tech industry, and they are literally holding them for ransom. Apparently they’ve learned a lot from the oil cartel OPEC. In Bolivia they have quite a bit of lithium which can be used to make batteries for personal tech toys and hybrid vehicles, and in China 96% of the REEs which are currently being mined.

Maybe the United States needs to start mining some of the electronics that we throw away. All those old computers, laptops, and other devices are being replaced by tablets and smart phones. We should be taking those metals out of those computers, some of which are precious metals and reusing them, and selling off the excess to pay for it all. A mining operation is quite an expensive proposition, and it’s often hard to separate out the elements you need from the compounds and materials that are trapped within.

Philosophically speaking it’s the same problem, you can try to extract the elements from the rocks, or you can take apart a computer and take out the precious metals or Rare Earth Elements that you need. It might serve us well to do this, rather than allowing third world nations and emerging nations to hold us hostage, use extortion tactics, or literally charge us as if ransoming those materials we need to manufacture the next generation of high-tech electronics, smart cars, and personal tech devices. There is a lot of smart recycling going on in the United States today, but it’s not enough.