Western Digital says it creates an initiative for Return rare metals to Earth from hard drives that are cyclized by data centers.
The technology company, best known for its digital storage products, says its advanced recycling and rare country for catching materials teamed up with Microsoft and two other companies to restore rare metals on Earth, including neodymium, disprozium and a pig.
The rare elements of the country have taken new importance in terms of trade battles between the United States and China. In response to the imposition of President Donald Trump's rise Tariffs for products imported from ChinaBeijing said last week that there is suspended exports of rare minerals on Earth to the United States. These minerals are key to producing very high-tech products and are found in products such as computers, cars and military hardware.
Hard disks in the data center's servers are often destroyed for security reasons when systems are upgraded, said Jackake Jung, vice president of the Western Digital Global Strategy on Thursday. The recovery of rare metals on Earth was not always a priority in the process, according to Jung.
“Rare countries are often melted by steel because many recovery processes include a very corrosive process that is not environmentally friendly, nor economical-and rare countries are lost. Our grade has demanded a different approach in the search for increasing the recycling of HDDS and their valuable materials,” Jung said.
In addition to Microsoft, the program includes Recycling critical materials and Microsoft's recycling partner company Recycling the point of pedal. The last two were brought when the initial pilot program achieved a return percentage of over 90%, Jung said.