Hidden in plain sight

There’s enough lithium in one year of U.S. mine waste to power
10 million electric vehicles. © Evgeny_V/Shutterstock

Seems there's a silver lining when looking at Open pit-mines, giant scars dug by us to power society. Well, it seems the waste byproduct of same is valuable beyond belief as rare earths are not rare, rather they are hard to get to.
Enter pit mines, they kinda indirectly get to the source without question.

The United States is home to dozens of active mines. Some extract copper, while others dig for iron. Whatever the resource, however, it usually makes up a small fraction of the rock pulled from the ground. The rest is typically ignored. Wasted.

“We’re only producing a few commodities,” said Elizabeth Holley, a professor of mining engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. “The question is: What else is in those rocks?”

The answer: a lot.

In a study published today by the journal Science, Holley and her colleagues aimed to quantify what else is in those rocks. They found that, across 70 critical elements at 54 active mines, the potential for recovery is enormous. There is enough lithium in one year of U.S. mine waste, for example, to power 10 million electric vehicles. For manganese, it’s enough for 99 million. Those figures far surpass both U.S. import levels of those elements and current demand for them.

Hidden in plain sight indeed.