An article in New Scientist from 24 May 2007 called "Earth's nature wealth: an audit", by David Cohen contains some alarming details about just how long before we will start to see the depletion of various rare earth metals which will have a serious impact on the global population.
Items that we take for granted will become impossible/overwhelmingly expensive to produce within the next 20-30 years. These include Computer chips, Fluorescent light bulbs, LCD monitors, to name a few.
This is an older article, however it appears to be the source of other more recent articles.
A short list of metals, expected depletion time, and their current use, as taken from diagram included with the full article.
| Metal |
Depletion time in years |
Current usage |
| Antimony | 15-20 | Pharmaceuticals |
| Hafnium | ~10 | Computer chips |
| Indium | 5-10 | LCD screens |
| Platinum | 15 | Car catalytic converters & fuel cells) |
| Silver | 15-20 | Car catalytic converters |
| Tantalum | 20-30 | Cell phones |
| Uranium | 30-40 | Power stations, weapons |
| Zinc | 20-30 | Galvanising |
From the article: "Without more recycling, antimony, which is used to make flame retardant materials, will run out in 15 years, silver in 10 and indium in under five. In a more sophisticated analysis, Reller has included the effects of new technologies, and projects how many years we have left for some key metals. He estimates that zinc could be used up by 2037, both indium and hafnium - which is increasingly important in computer chips - could be gone by 2017, and terbium - used to make the green phosphors in fluorescent light bulbs - could run out before 2012. It all puts our present rate of consumption into frightening perspective"
Perhaps its time to reconsider the need to update your cell phone/Computer every year to that newer model, and to make sure that items that contain these rare earth metals are taken to appropriate recycling stations to help start to tackling this problem.
