EDITORIAL: Rush for rare metals

The availability of rare metals used in everyday products will inevitably run short, causing a heated scramble for supplies. This underscores the need for ways to retrieve and recycle these materials, given that there are literally mountains of discarded consumer products.

Wisdom is needed in this regard. Rare metals are indispensable for the production of liquid crystal display panels, mobile phones, hybrid cars and a host of consumer goods. Japan relies on imports for almost all of its supply.

Global reserves of indium, lithium and other rare metals are small and limited to certain parts of the world. Robust economic growth among emerging powers is causing demand to rise.

Top-level diplomatic efforts are under way in Bolivia to secure a stable supply of lithium, which is used in batteries for next-generation automobiles. China, a major lithium supplier to Japan, is becoming a cause for concern because of its tightening of control over export of the metal.

Determined diplomatic efforts to secure resources are important. But that should not be the sole plank in the policy. We need to also focus on creating recycling systems and developing alternative materials.

We should bear in mind that discarded products--electrical appliances and cellphones, in particular--contain many nonferrous and rare metals. In that context, they are known as "urban mines."

However, we have yet to establish systems to collect discarded products or develop technologies to safely dismantle and efficiently recover the useful bits. There are big opportunities here.

From November of last year through February, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry spearheaded a program that collected some 560,000 unwanted cellphone handsets.

The roughly 2 kilograms of palladium extracted from the collected handsets was certainly not a dramatic amount.

But it shows what is possible, given that there are an estimated 200 million mobile phones that remain unused and stashed away nationwide. A user-friendlier recycling system would ensure that higher amounts of rare metals are recovered.

This applies not only to cellphones but also for many other products. Companies could devise design and sales methods rooted in the prerequisite of recycling. Systems to recycle the products, including businesses that collect them, could lead to the creation of new jobs.

In time, recycling systems such as these could serve as models for other countries in their efforts to prevent the depletion of rare metals, thereby easing frictions in the race to commandeer resources.

China and other emerging economic powers are confronted by a rising volume of spent home appliances and other "electronic waste." The process of disposing of this waste after extracting precious resources in a somewhat primitive manner is triggering severe pollution problems. Reliable recycling could resolve this dilemma.

We also look forward to the development of materials that can substitute for rare metals. Universities and companies are promoting research to use zinc, iron and other commonplace metals as alternatives.

The saga of how the twin oil crises in the 1970s fueled sweeping improvements in the nation's energy conservation and environmental technologies is known around the world. Today, the time is right to once again manifest the wisdom to surmount problems caused by shortages and let yet another success story unfold.

By efficiently using resources, the world can avoid having to struggle to obtain rare metals and other materials. That way, nations can forge greater harmony with the global environment. Japan is well positioned to mobilize the wisdom needed to blaze new paths in that direction.

--The Asahi Shimbun, March 17