Western Digital Corporation announced that Essential to cloud data center infrastructure, hard disk drives (HDDs) are complex devices that blend material science, mechanical engineering and physics. As part of its innovation, HDDs use a range of rare earth elements (REEs) like Neodymium (Nd), Praseodymium (Pr) and Dysprosium (Dy), prioritized for their magnetic properties to help HDDs precisely read and write data. Yet, traditional recycling methods recover only a fraction of these valuable materials, often missing rare earths entirely, leading to unnecessary waste.
Together, the companies transformed ~50,000 pounds of shredded end-of-life HDDs, mounting caddies and other materials into critical high-value materials, all while significantly reducing environmental impact. This pioneering process of creating a new advanced sorting ecosystem with an eco-friendly non-acid process not only recaptures essential rare earth elements but also extracts metals like gold (Au), copper (Cu), aluminum (Al) and steel, feeding them back into the U.S. supply chain, supporting industries that rely on these resources--such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, and advanced electronics. When scaled worldwide, this new recycling process could return a lot of recovered rare earths to the U.S. supply pool, drastically reducing the need for virgin material mining detrimental to people and planet.
