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LordOfDorkness42 t1_j7jw1s2 wrote

Not to mention, today's useless trivia night just be tomorrow's billion dollars industry.

Like look at bauxite. Before electricity it was literally considered mine poison that made the ground near useless.

Nowadays it's our main source of aluminium.

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earthwormjim91 t1_j7l43vj wrote

Well, nowadays our main source of aluminum is recycled aluminum. Mining new bauxite and extracting the aluminum is more expensive than just recycling.

Which is how it ultimately will be for a lot of the rare earth metals and stuff for batteries. It will eventually be cheaper and easier to just recycle the batteries than it will be to mine new lithium, cobalt, etc.

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