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The USGS produces annual reports for each mineral the US uses.[1] This is a lot of material, but it's all online. The rare earths report shows prices declining since 2014.[2] The rare earths aren't really that rare, just found at low concentrations.

Helium, though...

On the scale of a century, though, the reserves don't look that good. Some metals used in bulk, like copper and zinc, don't look so great. Remember that really high volume mining is less than a century old.

[1] https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/commodity-statistics-and-i...

[2] https://prd-wret.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium...



Copper is highly recyclable. The risk of high copper prices is that it becomes a little too recycleable, and criminals destroy your infrastructure in order to sell it for scrap.


I suspect that in the not too distant future (perhaps in my lifetime) there will be companies buying up landfills in order to mine them for recyclable materials.


And isn't it helpful of us to have concentrated the recyclable materials in a few locations?


The future is now!:) Google landfill mining, there are companies that already do it.


Exactly this is already a major problem in South Africa.




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