Over the past two years, Cyclic has developed a patent-pending technology called “CC360” to specifically address the challenge of recovering rare earths contained in end-of-life hard drives. While hard drives are typically sent to an IT asset disposal (ITAD) company at the end of life, this disposal process is designed for data destruction, followed by shredding of drives for the recovery of other metals such as gold and silver. The rare earths contained, however, are currently not recovered.
With the CC360, ITAD companies can separate a portion of hard drives for rare earth recovery, while retaining the rest of the hard drives for their traditional process, Cyclic said, adding that these separated magnets can then be processed by the company’s processing technologies, unlocking an additional value stream from hard drive disposal.
“Microsoft is working to achieve zero waste across our direct operations, products, and…
