The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will convene a two-part workshop series to examine whether and where resource-optimization pathways can materially improve the resilience, sustainability, and circularity of critical minerals supply for the United States. The first workshop will focus on the recovery and reuse of critical minerals from electronic waste and related industrial and consumer waste streams. The second workshop will examine biologically-enabled recovery pathways such as biomining and phytomining for extracting or concentrating critical minerals from low-grade ores, tailings, mine wastes, contaminated soils, and other previously processed or discarded materials.
At each workshop, participants will explore topics such as:

• The scientific and engineering readiness of these approaches to diversify U.S. supply and reduce losses;
• Their comparative economic (e.g., commercial potential, investment needs), environmental, and operational advantages and constraints; and
• The principal barriers to scale, such as feedstock availability, collection and preprocessing systems, process kinetics, separations, environmental performance, land-use considerations, regulatory issues, workforce needs, and market development.

Additionally, these workshops will discuss high-priority opportunities for research, demonstration, policy design, and future Academies activities to advance new critical mineral supply pathways that support longer-term U.S. strategic and economic needs. Each workshop will produce a rapporteur-authored proceedings-in-brief.