Happy Monday! Let’s get stuck in.

Circular Showcase

I’ll admit it - mining isn’t a word you’d expect to see in a circularity newsletter.

But there’s a fascinating and increasingly important industry that deserves attention: urban mining. 

Urban mining is the process of recovering valuable materials from manufactured products, buildings, and infrastructure, instead of extracting them from the earth. With recycling rates for critical metals and rare earth elements still painfully low, trillions of dollars worth of materials remain locked inside our cities - embedded in electronics, batteries, construction waste, and landfills.

As nations strive for greater supply chain resilience and resource independence, the importance of urban mining is impossible to ignore.

This week’s Circular Showcase spotlights six innovators leading the charge:

Ascend Elements
🔗 https://ascendelements.com/
📍 Massachusetts
Ascend Elements transforms end-of-life lithium-ion batteries into new cathode materials through its Hydro-to-Cathode® process. The company’s closed-loop system recovers lithium, nickel, and cobalt with up to 86% lower emissions than conventional mining, strengthening domestic and sustainable battery supply chains.

EPEA GmbH
🔗 https://www.epea.com/en
📍 Stuttgart
EPEA helps construction manufacturers, architects, and developers implement circular economy principles across products, buildings, and infrastructure. Its dedicated “Urban Mining” service reclaims materials from existing built assets and reintegrates them into new developments, reducing embodied carbon and waste.

Ionic Rare Earths
🔗 https://ionicre.com/
📍 Belfast
Through its subsidiary Ionic Technologies, Ionic Rare Earths is developing advanced recycling methods to extract high-purity rare-earth oxides from waste magnets and swarf. Its patented process achieves recovery rates above 99%, supporting domestic supply of critical materials across the UK and Europe.

Buckstop
🔗 https://www.buckstop.com/
📍 Washington DC
Buckstop applies AI-driven analytics to assess electronic devices and identify optimal recovery pathways. By mapping material composition and value potential, it enables recyclers and OEMs to maximise critical material recovery while preventing valuable components from becoming waste.

Cyclic Materials
🔗 https://www.cyclicmaterials.earth/
📍 Ontario
Cyclic Materials recovers rare-earth elements from end-of-life electronics, EV motors, and wind turbines. Its MagCycle℠ and REEPure℠ technologies extract neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium from discarded magnets, creating a low-impact, circular alternative to primary rare-earth mining.

Bioscope
🔗 https://bioscope.tech/
📍 Cambridge
Bioscope uses bio-refining and hydrometallurgical processes to recover critical raw materials from electronic waste without high-temperature smelting or harsh chemicals. Its technology enables low-impact metal recovery and integrates with recycling partners to build cleaner, closed-loop value chains.

Circular Calendar

Have a superb week and we’ll see you again on Friday!

Cheers to circularity,

#TeamCircularConnect #ConnectingTheCircularEconomy