{"id":1369,"date":"2010-10-04T21:45:31","date_gmt":"2010-10-05T01:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1369"},"modified":"2010-10-04T21:47:47","modified_gmt":"2010-10-05T01:47:47","slug":"chinese-export-ban-moves-japan-to-recycle-electronics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1369","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Export Ban Moves Japan to Recycle Electronics"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Hiroko Tabuchi, NEW YORK TIMES, October 4, 2010<\/em><\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a> Two decades after global competition drove the mines in this corner of Japan to extinction, Kosaka is again abuzz with talk of new riches.<\/p>\n

The treasures are not copper or coal. They are rare-earth elements and other minerals that are crucial to many Japanese technologies and have so far come almost exclusively from China, the global leader in rare earth mining.<\/p>\n

Recent problems with Chinese supplies of rare earths have sent Japanese traders and companies in search of alternative sources, creating opportunities for Kosaka.<\/p>\n

This town\u2019s hopes for a mining comeback lie not underground, but in what Japan refers to as urban mining \u2014 recycling the valuable metals and minerals from the country\u2019s huge stockpiles of used electronics like cellphones and computers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve literally discovered gold in cellphones,\u201d said Tetsuzo Fuyushiba, a former land minister and now opposition party member, who visited here recently to survey Kosaka\u2019s recycling plant.<\/p>\n

Kosaka\u2019s pursuits have become especially important for Japan in recent weeks. Late last month, amid a diplomatic spat with Tokyo, China started to block exports of certain rare earths to Japan.<\/p>\n

The shipping ban was still in effect on Monday evening in Japan, an industry official said, though a trickle of shipments seemed to be seeping out as a result of uneven enforcement of the ban by customs officers at various ports. China has allowed exports of Chinese-made rare earth magnets and other rare earth products to Japan, but not semi-processed rare earth ores that would enable Japanese companies to make products.<\/p>\n

The cutoff has caused hand-wringing at Japanese manufacturers, from giants like Toyota<\/a> to tiny electronics makers, because the raw materials are crucial to products as diverse as hybrid electric cars, wind turbines and computer display screens.<\/p>\n

Late last week, Japan\u2019s trade minister, Akihiro Ohata, said he would ask the government to include a \u201crare earth strategy\u201d in its supplementary budget for this year.<\/p>\n

In Kosaka, Dowa Holdings, the company that mined here for over a century, has built a recycling plant whose 200-foot-tall furnace renders old electronics parts into a molten stew from which valuable metals and other minerals can be extracted. The salvaged parts come from around Japan and overseas, including the United States.<\/p>\n

Besides gold, Dowa\u2019s subsidiary, Kosaka Smelting and Refining, has so far successfully reclaimed rare metals like indium, used in liquid-crystal display screens, and antimony, used in silicon wafers for semiconductors.<\/p>\n

The company is trying to develop ways to reclaim the harder-to-mine minerals included among the rare earths \u2014 like neodymium, a vital element in industrial batteries used in electric motors, and dysprosium, used in laser materials.<\/p>\n

Although Japan is poor in natural resources, the National Institute for Materials Science, a government-affiliated research group, says that used electronics in Japan hold an estimated 300,000 tons of rare earths. Though that amount is tiny compared to reserves in China, which mines 93 percent of the world\u2019s rare earth minerals, tapping these urban mines could help reduce Japan\u2019s dependence on its neighbor, analysts say.<\/p>\n

The global rare earth market is small by mining standards \u2014 just $1.5 billion last year, although its value is rising as prices have surged in response to Chinese restrictions on exports.<\/p>\n

Concern over China\u2019s hoarding of rare earths has also been spreading to the United States. Although China has not specifically blocked shipments to any place but Japan, it had already tightened its overall export quotas of the minerals, announcing in July that it would reduce them by 72 percent for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n

Last Wednesday in Washington, the House of Representatives approved a bill authorizing research to address the supply of rare earths, saying the minerals were critical to energy, military and manufacturing technologies. [Read rest of article]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a beautiful example of unintended consequences. For China, it probably means a long-term reduction in demand. For everyone else, especially Japan, it means a refocus on recycling and an emphasis on finding more local materials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17,401],"tags":[746,750,745,751,748,749,742,747,741,744,743],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1369"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1371,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions\/1371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}