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Modern Mining is preparing to commercialize its electronic waste processing technology as the US looks to keep more critical mineral-bearing material at home and reduce its reliance on foreign supply chains.
Discarded electronics contain high concentrations of valuable base and precious metals—including gold, silver, and palladium—as well as critical rare-earth elements, often at levels exceeding the ore grades of natural rock deposits.
In July, President Trump signed a measure that gives officials authority under the Defense Production Act to implement export restrictions on some industrial waste in a bid to retain critical minerals and rare elements contained in those products.
The move was no surprise to Modern Mining, as the privately held company is currently raising capital to build its first commercial plant after progressing from laboratory testing to a pilot facility and then an industrial-scale demonstration operation in Greenville, North Carolina.
The company processes discarded electronics to recover gold, silver, palladium and copper, positioning e-waste as an above-ground mineral resource rather than simply a waste stream.
“We really need to be thinking of [recycling] as the beginning of a brand new supply chain,” Modern Mining CEO Jeet Basi told MINING.COM in an interview.
“We see electronic waste not just simply as something that needs to be recycled, but we view it as an above-ground mineral resource that can become a part of the domestic supply chain.”
Basi believes policies aimed at retaining critical mineral-bearing e-waste in the US could strengthen domestic supply but says keeping the material in the country is only part of the equation.
Downstream processing capacity will also have to expand if the US is to turn discarded electronics into usable metals economically.
“Keeping that feedstock on US soil is great, but we also need to expand and grow the downstream processing infrastructure to allow us to economically convert those materials into tangible downstream products,” Basi said.
Mining without the mine
Scaling critical-mineral recycling could reduce the need for new mine development by 25–40% by 2050, including roughly 40% for copper and cobalt and 25% for lithium and nickel, according to the International Energy Agency.
Modern Mining’s process begins in much the same way as conventional mineral processing.
Electronic waste is cut, ground and shredded until its constituent materials are liberated. Gravity separation is then used to concentrate valuable metals while separating plastics, fiberglass and other non-metallic material.
The resulting metallic powder is assayed before undergoing what the company calls “aqueous purification,” using selective chemistry to isolate and enrich individual metals into products that can be sold into commodity markets.
The process avoids the large-scale incineration used in conventional e-waste processing, although a small melting stage is used at the back end.
Modern Mining sees that approach as offering both economic and permitting advantages, particularly in the US, where developing new large-scale smelting capacity can be challenging.
“We’re approaching e-waste with the mindset of a mining company rather than a waste management company,” Basi said.
Instead of concentrating processing in a single large facility, the company is pursuing a distributed network of modular, scalable plants that can be located closer to major sources of electronic waste.
Following its first commercial facility, it aims to build roughly one plant per year over an initial five-year expansion period.
The US is its first target because of the amount of electronic waste generated in the country. Longer term, the company envisions locating processing capacity around major e-waste generation hubs.
“We’d love to have one in every state if we could,” Basi said, adding that the company has identified five priority candidates for expansion.
Complementing conventional mining
Despite the growing potential of so-called urban mining, Basi does not expect recycled electronics to replace conventional mines, but sees the two sources of metal as complementary.
Urban mining can keep material that has already been extracted in circulation for longer, while conventional mines will still be required to satisfy growing demand for metals as populations expand and technologies evolve, he said.
That distinction could become increasingly important as artificial intelligence accelerates turnover of electronic equipment.
More sophisticated AI systems require new hardware and physical infrastructure, potentially making recently installed equipment obsolete more quickly and adding to the volume of electronic waste available for recycling, Basi said, adding that the company believes building a larger domestic secondary-metals industry will require cooperation between government and the private sector.
Stable policies that ensure reliable supplies of feedstock are one part of the equation, he said. Investment and permitting incentives to expand processing capacity are another.
A third piece would be incentives encouraging manufacturers to use metals recovered from domestic secondary sources.
Many major original equipment manufacturers already have recycled-material targets but struggle to meet them, Basi said.
“It won’t happen alone through private, and I also don’t think it’ll happen alone through public,” he said. “That’s where I think the synergy between the two can really be a catalyst.”
