Rare earths

Another solar efficiency record : 43.5 %

As Treehugger reported last week, the Japanese company Sharp has broken another record : 43.5 percent of efficiency, to be compared with their previous record, 36.9% efficiency which had been reached in November 2011. Typical solar panels in the market today still have around 15 or 20 percent of efficiciency. But research is breaking records …

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Urban mining, or why mining landfills is good

I knew it all along ! As rare earths are more and more expensive and critically needed for our technological thirst, it is becoming economically viable to mine landfills and to recycle old appliances. As the New York Times indeed noted : ” This town’s hopes for a mining comeback lie not underground, but in …

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Recycling by the numbers

The New Ecologist proposes a series of interesting figures on recycling. Here are some of them : The recycling industry is worth $160 billion and employs globally 15 million people. Recycling aluminium needs only five percent of the energy needed to mine and refine the same quantity of new aluminium. The top 5 recycling countries …

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