Rare earths reality check: US has the resources but chose not to mine them — and recycling may be the fastest path forward
Oct 13, 2025
Key Points
- The US stopped mining rare earths by choice, not capability—regulatory burden and environmental concerns made offshoring rational, but the answer should have been cleaner domestic production.
- MP Materials is working on lower-impact mining and processing, though scaling production while reducing environmental footprint typically forces a tradeoff.
- Redwood Materials is extracting rare earths from end-of-life electric vehicles, sidestepping the mining versus cleanliness dilemma and potentially offering the fastest path to supply security.
Summary
The US has the raw materials for rare earth production but chose not to mine them. Now it faces a choice between building cleaner mines or accelerating recycling.
Rare earths are not actually rare. The US mined them before, stopped, and can restart. The constraint is not geology or technology but regulation, incentives, and political will. The US deficiency is a choice, not a capability gap.
The case against domestic mining is real but not insurmountable. Mining is dirty. Tailings contaminate water with molybdenum, forever chemicals, and other toxins. Historically, the rationale for offshoring production was sound—avoid the environmental cost at home. But the answer should never have been to stop mining entirely. It should have been to mine cleanly.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's strictness on environmental standards contributed to the calculus against US rare earth production. Loosening those constraints could shift economics. Companies like MP Materials are working on cleaner mining and processing, though scaling production while reducing environmental footprint typically forces a tradeoff.
A third path exists: recycling. Redwood Materials, founded by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, extracts rare earths locked in end-of-life electric vehicles. The material is conserved even after a battery degrades. Strip the vehicle, reprocess the battery, reintroduce the rare earths into the supply chain. Redwood has been executing on this for years and its importance has only grown.
Recycling sidesteps the scaling-versus-cleanliness tradeoff. It works with material already in circulation, requires no new mines, and faces fewer regulatory hurdles. Whether it can scale fast enough to meet demand remains open, but it may be the fastest path to supply security without the political and environmental friction of new mining.