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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 impact on the environment. With innovation in areas such as electric vehicles, wastewater treatment and battery recycling, these goals seem easier to achieve than ever before.
But could it really be that simple?
While much of this progress enables countries and organizations to achieve a cleaner future in the long term, the actual transition to cleaner technology is not exactly clean. Many of these cleaner options require batteries, which are composed of rare metals that must be mined and smelted in carbon-rich processes. There is also no great solution yet for mass recycling of these batteries.
Many startups have pivoted to clean tech in recent years, and while they are doing a good job of bringing new technologies and cleaner processes to the table, few are solving the carbon-heavy supply chain problems of the clean tech industry. But Nth Cycle is trying to help.
Nth Cycle has developed technology that allows customers to refine and recycle rare metals on site. This reduces the cost and environmental impact of shipping these metals abroad to be refined or recycled, especially since about 85% of rare metal processing currently takes place in China, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Nth Cycle also does not use carbon-heavy smelting to process the materials.
Company 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, it is impossible that countries like the US will meet their climate goals on time. The rare metals required for this are abundantly available, but will not be put into use quickly enough. Nth Cycle hopes the ability to eliminate part of the supply chain in a very timely manner will help with this.