Ten teams recognized for groundbreaking solutions to reclaim critical materials.

With potential billions of dollars in critical materials lost in discarded electronics each year, the U.S. Department of Energy has announced the first winners of its $4 million E-SCRAP competition, recognizing innovations that transform e-waste into a valuable resource for supply chains and sustainability.

First announced in March, DOE saw the immense potential of recovering valuable and critical materials from electronic scrap and set out to drive innovation in tackling waste streams that lose roughly $57 billion in raw material value annually.

Spanning everything from smartphones and home appliances to medical and office equipment, e-waste encompasses nearly all discarded technology powered by electricity and has become one of the most problematic and rapidly growing waste streams worldwide.

In 2014, global e-waste generation totaled roughly 44.4 million metric tons, according to the United Nations University, a figure expected to nearly double by 2030 as the proliferation of electronics continues to accelerate.

With only 17.4% of e-scrap collected and recycled globally in 2019, according to the Global E-waste Monitor 2020, E-SCRAP aims to transform discarded electronics into a sustainable resource for supply chains by addressing the barriers in current recycling processes.

Launched to foster innovation and address the systemic challenges of e-scrap recycling, the E-SCRAP competition seeks to unlock the full potential of electronic waste.

"This prize addresses the urgent need to reduce the amount of critical mineral waste that goes unrecycled in the technologies we use every day," said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Jeff Marootian. "We're excited to see how ideas and solutions spurred by the competition can transform this huge environmental loss into new opportunities to recover and recycle critical materials from devices that are discarded after use."

Through this phased approach, the competition aims to develop solutions that recover critical materials and reintegrate them into supply chains, paving the way for a more sustainable and circular electronics economy.

Three-phase approach

To address the growing challenge of electronic waste and unlock it as an untapped resource, the E-SCRAP competition adopted a structured, three-phased approach – a framework designed to guide participants from initial ideas to actionable solutions, providing both financial support and technical resources to bring their concepts to life.

• Phase 1: Incubate – In the first phase, competitors presented ideas with the potential to significantly increase the recovery of critical materials from e-scrap. Teams selected in this phase received funding and access to national laboratory support to refine their concepts.

• Phase 2: Prototype – Advancing teams began prototyping their innovations, collecting data to demonstrate feasibility and optimize their strategies for economic and environmental sustainability.

• Phase 3: Demonstrate – In the final phase, participants implemented and scaled their solutions, addressing real-world challenges in recycling and materials recovery.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMT), the first phase of E-SCRAP offered up to $4 million in cash prizes and technical support.

Concluding this month, the first phase awarded $500,000 in cash and $300,000 in national laboratory assistance to ten teams from seven states for their innovative solutions to critical material recovery.

These phase-one winners focused on tackling critical inefficiencies in e-scrap recycling, with projects ranging from recovering rare earth elements from hard disk drives to developing processes for recirculating neodymium-iron-boron magnets into the supply chain.

By addressing these challenges, the contest sought to advance technologies that could mitigate the growing environmental impact of discarded electronics while strengthening U.S. supply chains.

Winning participants

Department of Energy

Locations of the Phase 1 winners of the Electronics Scrap Recycling Advancement Prize, showcasing ten innovative projects from seven states: California, Texas, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Each team received $50,000 in cash and $30,000 in technical assistance from DOE national laboratories.

The winning projects from phase one introduced novel approaches to recovering critical materials from electronic waste. These projects explored advanced methods to reclaim rare earth elements, platinum group metals, gallium, and high-performance magnets from discarded electronics, addressing some of the most persistent challenges in e-scrap recycling.

The ten phase-one winners and their pioneering projects include:

• Critical Metal Bio-recovery from E-Waste (Infinite Elements Inc.) – Based in El Paso, Texas, Infinite Elements has developed a multistep process combining granulation, mechanical sorting, and bioleaching to maximize the recovery of mixed-material e-waste.

• Garner DiskMantler (Garner) – Located in Roseville, California, Garner's DiskMantler uses shock, harmonics, and vibration to disassemble hard disk and solid-state drives, recovering critical rare earth elements (REEs) for recycling.

• Bluerock Filtration (Tikal Industries) – Chicago, Illinois-based Tikal Industries' Bluerock Filtration system integrates deionization into existing recycling processes to optimize the selective recovery of critical materials for renewable energy, electronics, and EVs.

• Revolutionizing Rare Earth Elements Recycling from E-Scrap (RareTerra) – Operating out of Berkeley, California, RareTerra is creating a bioplatform to selectively solubilize and separate REEs from e-scrap, eliminating harsh acids and reducing sorting requirements.

• Zero Waste Magnet-Grade Powder Recovery from E-Waste (Insource Materials Collective) – Rancho Palos Verdes, California's Insource Materials Collective is pioneering a recycling process to directly transform discarded neodymium-iron-boron magnets into reusable ones without preprocessing.

• Acid-Free Dissolution Recycling (Critical Materials Recycling) – Based in Boone, Iowa, Critical Materials Recycling is using eco-friendly acid-free dissolution technology to recover REEs from low-value e-waste. This process also enables comprehensive recycling of all materials within the feedstock, including precious metals, aluminum, plastics, and steel.

• GaCycle (GaCycle) – West Lafayette, Indiana-based GaCycle uses a microorganism-based solution to extract gallium from e-waste products, achieving higher recovery rates than traditional acid-leaching methods.

• Electrochemical Separations for E-Waste Recycling (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) – Professor Xiao Su and his students have developed an energy-efficient electrochemical process to recover platinum group metals from e-waste in Urbana, Illinois.

• Recycling E-Scrap with Adaptive Capacity Technology (Intel-E-Waste LLC) – Located in State College, Pennsylvania, Intel-E-Waste LLC offers a patented, chemical-free process to recover critical materials and plastics from e-scrap.

• Selective Leaching for Rare Earth Magnet Recycle (Galvanix) – Based in Cleveland, Ohio, Galvanix uses selective leaching and sustainable molten salt electrolysis to recover REEs from magnet scrap and produce new, high-quality magnets.

With phase one concluded, the competition will now enter its prototyping phase, where participants will transform their concepts into actionable prototypes through data collection and feasibility studies.

This phase will focus on refining both the economic and environmental viability of the proposed solutions, paving the way for their scalability in real-world applications.

"Developing innovative, cost-effective, and environmentally safe methods for critical material recovery and extractions will increase the industrial competitiveness of America's energy industrial base, fortify America's energy supply chains, and address the environmental sustainability concerns for a rapidly growing waste stream," said Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office Director Chris Saldaña. "Our nation's current surplus of unrecycled electronics carries valuable potential that can be realized through improving our ability to convert and repurpose those materials."