Nathan Proctor
Senior Director, Campaign for the Right to Repair, U.S. PIRG Education Fund
New report: Reducing e-waste can address demand for critical materials, help avoid dangerous deep-sea mining
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Research outlines how mining would damage deep-sea ecosystems, explores better sources of critical minerals
BOSTON — According to a new report, We don’t need deep-sea mining, common-sense steps including reducing electronic waste and removing barriers to repairing existing products would be more effective to meet critical mineral demand than deep-sea mining. In fact, the world trashes more copper and cobalt in our electronic waste each year than would likely be supplied by deep-sea mining operations in the central Pacific annually over the next decade.
Companies are citing potential shortages of the critical minerals — such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and rare earth elements — needed to transition away from fossil fuels to justify new forms of extraction such as mining the ocean floor. But the report released Tuesday by Environment America Research & Policy Center, Frontier Group and U.S. PIRG Education Fund exposes how mining operations could destroy vulnerable ecosystems, and touts a better path to meet raw material demand: by tackling the growing e-waste crisis.
“Electronic waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world, and many devices are made to be disposable. Why dive 20,000 feet below the surface, wreak havoc on a remote ecosystem, just to mine these materials and then put them in throwaway devices such as unfixable cell phones or disposable vapes?” explained Nathan Proctor, one of the report’s authors and the senior director of the Right to Repair campaigns at U.S. PIRG Education Fund. “The solution is obvious. Make long-lasting products, fix them when they break and recycle them when you can’t.”
The report outlines how we can build a circular economy for critical minerals around the “5 Rs” – the traditional 3 Rs of “reduce, reuse and recycle,” coupled with reimagining products for greater efficiency and durability and repairing products to extend their lifetimes. These strategies could fully close any global supply gaps for nickel and copper by 2030 and dramatically narrow them for cobalt, lithium and the rare earth element neodymium. Longer-lasting electronics and consumers’ ability to exercise their repair rights would mean that critical minerals are used for the right purpose: transitioning the world to clean energy technologies.
The report also finds that deep-sea mining would irreparably alter hundreds to thousands of square miles of seafloor that is home to thousands of marine species. Extraction would also kick up plumes of sediment and mining waste, which could have wide-ranging impacts.
“Deep sea mining would devastate ancient, slow-growing and remote ecosystems that are home to deep-sea coral, anemones, sponges and more,” said Kelsey Lamp, one of the report’s authors and the director of oceans campaigns for Environment America Research & Policy Center. “Seabed mining would strip these habitats of life, introducing noise, light and pollution to places that are not equipped to handle it. We don’t know if these places will ever recover from mining damage – and that loss could have consequences for marine ecosystems beyond the seafloor.”
This report comes as diplomats from around the world prepare to travel to Jamaica in July, where the International Seabed Authority could debate, for the first time, a proposal to put a moratorium on mining – or see a loophole pave the way for the first commercial exploitation of the deep sea for minerals ever undertaken.