An alternative approach to recovering rare earth elements

Although rare earth elements (REEs) are much in demand because of their numerous applications in today’s high-tech world, there has been no large-scale recovery of these key metals to date and substantial amounts end up in landfill. Recent figures suggest global average recycling rates for all the REEs are below 1 %. At Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, significant new research has been undertaken into the recovery of REEs from end-of-life products – with fluorescent lamps a targeted stream.