Rare Earth Elements (REEs) are vital to modern technologies and society, from cell phones to energy-saving lamps, wind turbines and electric car batteries. To meet the current energy transition goals to mitigate climate change, the demand for these elements is skyrocketing. But only a few key players like China control the market and their mining has a disastrous societal and environmental impact. This is why they have been classified at the international level as critical raw materials. Despite these facts, less than 1% of REE are currently being recycled from end-of-life products, with the rest being dumped in landfills and contributing to the global e-waste problem. This is mainly caused by the fact that REEs are only found in small quantities in e-waste, and are often blended together and with other metals.

While Switzerland is blessed with one of the best recycling ecosystem in the world, it ranks among the top countries in terms of per capita municipal solid waste volume. Over 26 kg of electronic waste are produced per capita and year. According to the country’s first Circularity Gap Report, its circularity Metric is only 6.9%, leaving a gap of over 93%. Additionally, the country heavily relies on imports for both raw materials and finished goods, notably high-impact materials like metal ores are predominantly imported. At REEcover we want to take advantage of the well-established recycling scheme to recover critical minerals which are currently discarded.