We met so many fascinating folks at our booth at the 2026 Iron Range Earth Fest this spring! And, based on all the email sign-ups that day for news from Reclaiming Critical Metals, we started this blog to share updates on our progress. If you’re not familiar with how we got started, you can read our first blog entry from May for a brief history. We’ve been working on this idea, now reality, since 2021.
Most recently, we’ve been looking at potential sites for our operation. We are committed to locating on the Range, so we’ve been talking with the IRRR and area cities to see what they have available. Nothing quite perfect yet, but we’re getting closer. We will need about 5 acres with paved highway access and utilities. And, on the Range, we’ve found we must be careful not to fall in love with a place that is scheduled to be mined.
We also spent a huge amount of time and effort applying for a “Statewide Recycling Market Development Grant” from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. A little background might help explain why. Our operation will purchase shredded circuit boards from certified area recycling businesses. Ninety percent of shredded e-waste in the U.S. is shipped overseas for smelting. We’ll provide an alternative, saving thousands of miles and months in time. We will process shredded boards in two ways: we’ll use mechanical separation on 95% of the feedstock, yielding streams of critical metals needed by U.S. manufacturers, and we’ll use a new bio-inspired method that we’re developing to process the last 5% yielding precious metals. The intense research required to develop and patent a new bio-inspired method for that final processing is the project we submitted to the MPCA.
Meanwhile, we sent samples of our future feedstock to weeeSwiss, the Zurich-based company that is modifying their innovative equipment for our needs. (In Europe, the term for e-waste is weee, “waste electronics and electrical equipment.”) They will adapt a processing module that they currently use to meet our feedstock (shredded circuit boards) specifications. In about three months, we should have all the engineering specifications, facility size, through-put data, and financial projections necessary for us to take the next step—financing the building of the factory. Like some but not all other e-waste recycling businesses, we will have our own lab both to assess the metals content of our feedstock and to implement the bio-inspired method.
Bio-inspired is a term we’re using to refer to biomimicry which studies how nature accomplishes tasks and then emulates the natural process in technology, essentially mimicking biology. Did you know that Velcro is an example of biomimicry? And the shape of wind turbine blades? If this makes you curious, check out https://biomimicry.net/ for more examples. We’ll be mimicking one of nature’s processes and building a technology to do what nature does so efficiently. More on this as we dive deeper into the research we’ve already started!
Thank you for your interest in our progress. Stay tuned for more blog entries, you’ll receive an email notification when there’s a new update to check out.
