People in many parts of the world are trying to reduce their impact on the climate. From companies to countries, many groups have goals to reduce their environmental impact. With innovation in areas such as electric vehicles, wastewater treatment and battery recycling, among many others, these goals seem easier than ever to achieve.
But could it really be that easy?
While much of this progress is preparing countries and organizations for a cleaner future in the long term, the actual transition to cleaner technology is far from clean. Many of these cleaning options require batteries, which are made of rare metals that must be mined and smelted in carbon-heavy processes. Also, there is not yet a great solution to recycle these batteries en masse.
Many startups have flocked to cleantech in recent years, and while they are doing a good job of bringing new technologies and cleaner processes to the table, few are fixing the supply chain problems of the cleantech industry. But Nth Cycle is trying to help.
Nth Cycle has built technology that allows its customers to refine and recycle rare metals on site. This reduces the cost and environmental impact of shipping these metals overseas for refining or recycling, especially since about 85% of rare metal processing is currently done in China, according to the US Department of Commerce. Nth Cycle also does not use high carbon smelting to process the materials.
The company’s co-founder and CEO, Megan O’Connor, believes that speeding up this process and making it cheaper is critical to the clean energy transition. With the current overseas supply chain, there is no way countries like the US will meet their climate goals in time. The rare metals needed to do this are plentiful enough, but they’re not going to be put to use fast enough. Nth Cycle hopes its ability to cut out a very timely part of the supply chain will help.
