this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2026
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Electric Vehicles
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I'm not a chemist, but I've heard that a lot of substances (e.g. rare earths) are engineered into products in a way that makes them next to impossible to recycle. Which is bad because... it's in their name. ๐ค
They're not actually rare, the name is historical.
Rare isn't a binary quality, true. But the name isn't meaningless either. They're rare enough that superpowers compete over mining sites.
To be pedantic, rich deposits of them are reasonably rare. But that's mostly due to capitalism making it unviable to process lower concentration deposits. The elements are otherwise pretty common.
This is true of a lot of modern materials. Plastics, alloys, and microelectronics. The advancements make them better than anything which would be easily reusable or recoverable, or repairable. But we pay the cost, both in them being disposable instead, and in the forced design of being throwaway and not lasting, so profitable to make this was for the companies.