Recycling Industries

Under policies like India's National Critical Mineral Mission, mine waste is actively classified as a "secondary mineral resource." Reprocessing overburden and tailings helps secure domestic supplies of critical and rare-earth elements while reducing the environmental impact of disposal.

Gold ore tailings are typically considered waste, but older operations often lost gold due to limitations in historical processing technology. To unlock the residual value, the tailings are first re-ground to ensure that 60–80% of the particles pass through -200 mesh (approximately 74 microns). This helps liberate any gold or heavy minerals previously locked inside larger host minerals such as quartz.

Recovering heavy and critical minerals from copper ore tailings, such as copper, gold, silver, iron, and rare earth elements, is achieved by combining re-grinding to liberate trapped minerals with froth flotation, gravity separation, or hydrometallurgical leaching.

End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) recycling is the systematic process of dismantling unroadworthy vehicles and depolluting them to safely extract and recover up to 95% of their materials, including steel, aluminum, and plastics. This process directly supports the circular economy and reduces reliance on virgin resources.

Glass is 100% recyclable and can be processed endlessly without losing its purity or quality. The recycling process involves sorting by color, crushing into "cullet," and melting at high temperatures to manufacture new containers. Every ton of glass recycled saves over a ton of raw natural resources.

Rare earth magnet recycling is the process of recovering critical elements such as neodymium, dysprosium, and praseodymium from end-of-life electronics, wind turbines, and EV motors. Because less than 1% of these magnets are currently recycled globally, facilities use advanced methods such as Hydrogen Decrepitation (HD) to break magnets into powder without damaging machinery.

Lithium battery recycling recovers critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel from spent EV and electronic batteries. Recyclers use physical shredding to create a powder called "black mass," followed by hydrometallurgical processes such as acid or solvent leaching to extract highly pure, reusable metals. This process significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption compared to traditional mining. Proper recycling also helps prevent dangerous fires and environmental hazards associated with improper battery disposal.

Solar panel recycling extracts valuable materials such as glass, aluminum, copper, and silver from decommissioned panels. The process involves removing frames, separating layers through thermal or chemical delamination, and shredding cells to recover more than 90% of a module's weight.