Probably not, but it can't possibly be worse than just regularly mining and processing them. If they can get the small quantities of rare earth elements present in other deposits, say the copper or gold we're already going to be mining, and get them out in an economical way, that's still a net plus.

We need to ramp up mining by roughly ten times what we're currently doing in the next ten years to meet the EU's goals for the green energy transition.

Nothing is replacing mining. We're already on pace to be behind where we need to be by an order of magnitude, and unfortunately public opinion is not currently where it needs to be to do anything about that. Mining IS environmentally friendly, when it's done right in countries with the proper regulation, in that the local environmental effects are minimal and short term, and it's literally the only way we have any hope of slowing climate change.

Methods like in the OP won't be viable until it's too late, and even then they'll be a drop in the bucket compared to mining.

> it's the fact that the cost of extraction is very low in China due to low labour costs and crucially the lack of environmental regulations.

Probably more important than either of these is that the Chinese government wanted the current state of affairs---they want leverage, and being the world's primary supplier of REM gives them some. To that end, they're fire-hosed low or even zero interest loans at the domestic REM industry so that their suppliers could undercut everyone else. Like a lot of Chinese products, REMs are being sold by Chinese companies for less than it costs to produce them.

I mean, Cyanobacteria are probably not going to mutate and become pathogenic organisms… but we should probably stay away from the ones that already produce neurotoxins.

But I’m somehow sure those are the exact ones that would be most effective at extracting minerals.

Man I love these German scientists..

The following submission statement was provided by /u/berlinparisexpress:

I felt like posting and commenting on this because I work for a company of 300 people that has made the shift to the 4-day workweek (with no loss of pay) almost 4 years ago. As some people comment in the article linked, it was hard!

Not everyone was on the same page or communicating well. Some departments were just super disorganized and stressed. In the first few months people actually reported MORE stress and our sales results tanked. Some people also thought it was super unfair because some of my colleagues fully enjoyed the day off while others felt that they still had to catch up on their work because their results were time-dependent (eg: salespeople having a fixed number of calls to make every week).

However, after 6 months of adjustments it just started to work wonderfully for everyone. For instance, at the beginning anyone could pick any day but Monday but we now restrict it to Wednesday or Friday so that the teams work more easily together.

I haven't worked a single Friday in 4 years and could not go back to a 5DWW easily now and I don't think any of my colleagues would.

I think this is really interesting as a whole lot of people currently entering the job market are starting to doubt they'll ever retire, so if we can find ways of making work more sustainable during our careers we might achieve something even more interesting than "escape the rat race as early as possible" and start enjoying life at 70.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11f6b10/the_uks_4day_workweek_trial_is_hailed_but/jahsn2h/

Not sure why you are being downvoted. It makes sense in the long term, to think long term.

Half the coin. There are people running those things there. I live in one & I wish the gov cared.

Is this going to be environmentally friendly like tar sands and fracking?

What can we - as consumers - do about this stuff, aside from just not buying tech and living like luddites? Is there some kind of sustainably sourced rare earth metals thing we can support?

I already try to make my own electronics and repair broken ones, and I avoid buying new tech when it's unnecessary to do so. Which I argue is likely more than most, but I'd rather find some way to not be involved in this toxic lake (and issues like this) if possible.

Evidently they do given that they are centralised in China

The west does not care about those things either. Just look at oil extraction in the US or open-pit coal mines in Germany as examples.

Hmph. Weird. I'm fairly sure I saw something similar 3 years ago when doing a paper on bioremediation. It's nice but living creatures are finicky. In all likelihood it won't be economical

Interesting until you realize that most REE containing water sources which are viable are pH 3 and lower. So this method wouldnt work in vast majority of situations. There is tons of research on this and a very large DoD effort in this area far more economically viable than this currently. Cool work otherwise though...

I felt like posting and commenting on this because I work for a company of 300 people that has made the shift to the 4-day workweek (with no loss of pay) almost 4 years ago. As some people comment in the article linked, it was hard!

Not everyone was on the same page or communicating well. Some departments were just super disorganized and stressed. In the first few months people actually reported MORE stress and our sales results tanked. Some people also thought it was super unfair because some of my colleagues fully enjoyed the day off while others felt that they still had to catch up on their work because their results were time-dependent (eg: salespeople having a fixed number of calls to make every week).

However, after 6 months of adjustments it just started to work wonderfully for everyone. For instance, at the beginning anyone could pick any day but Monday but we now restrict it to Wednesday or Friday so that the teams work more easily together.

I haven't worked a single Friday in 4 years and could not go back to a 5DWW easily now and I don't think any of my colleagues would.

I think this is really interesting as a whole lot of people currently entering the job market are starting to doubt they'll ever retire, so if we can find ways of making work more sustainable during our careers we might achieve something even more interesting than "escape the rat race as early as possible" and start enjoying life at 70.

in reality it's the damage extracting/processing that makes it viable for China over anywhere else given the West dislikes the massive ecological impact but China does not.

Interestingly, 2019 study showed that the process was potentially for environmental remediation of toxic heavy metals as well as REE: “Among the various microorganisms studied, also cyanobacterial strains proved to be highly capable to biosorb and accumulate dissolved (heavy) metals as well as REE.” Suggesting that the process could, in addition to pulling out REE from industrial waste spilled into the Rhine River, help bioremediation of other sites, presumably including the whole interconnected biosphere. So all countries could use it to help the planet- even toxic mine tailings flowing into China’s waterways could be tackled. Fischer, C. B., Körsten, S., Rösken, L. M., Cappel, F., Beresko, C., Ankerhold, G., Schönleber, A., Geimer, S., Ecker, D., & Wehner, S. (2019). Cyanobacterial promoted enrichment of rare earth elements europium, samarium and neodymium and intracellular europium particle formation. RSC advances, 9(56), 32581–32593. https://doi.org/10.1039/c9ra06570a

Oh man, westerners get angry when a critical material doesn't come out in their control area. That was not ok when American soldiers electrocuted civilians in Abu Gharip from their rectums.

This is what Tiberium did in Command & Conquer. It was how the aliens were terraforming Earth prior to their invasion.

Skrim? I think that’s what we called the aliens.

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What shifting work abroad due to greed does to a developing country.

It should be noted, as with oil, the US policy on this stuff is to be the last country with reserves.

Edit: In case it’s unclear, the US prefers to import oil and precious metals instead of digging ours up first. It’s not ONLY environmental or cost, though these are significant factors. We can always extract finite resources in the future when other countries have sold theirs or during wartime.

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It's not just lack of environmental regulations.

It's the lack of environmental, labor, safety, and health regulations.