Forward-looking: Western Digital has launched a large-scale hard disk drive recycling initiative in partnership with Microsoft, Critical Materials Recycling, and PedalPoint Recycling. The program, called the Advanced Recycling and Rare Earth Material Capture Program, aims to tackle a longstanding problem in the tech industry: the loss of valuable rare earth elements and other critical materials when data center drives reach the end of their lifecycle and are typically destroyed, generating significant e-waste.

Although solid-state drives have become the standard for personal computers, mechanical hard drives remain the backbone of data centers worldwide. When these drives are retired, they are often shredded for data security, and their components – ranging from aluminum and steel to rare earth magnets – frequently end up in landfills.

The environmental cost is further compounded by the fact that mining new rare earth elements such as dysprosium, neodymium, and praseodymium is highly energy-intensive and produces substantial greenhouse gas emissions. Adding to the challenge, China, which dominates global rare earth material production, has recently imposed export restrictions on several key materials, threatening the supply chain for US technology companies.

Western Digital’s program aims to reclaim critical materials domestically. The process begins with collecting end-of-life drives from Microsoft’s US data centers, which are then shredded and sorted by PedalPoint Recycling. The extracted magnets and steel are sent to CMR, where an acid-free dissolution recycling technology recovers rare earth elements. This copper salt-based process selectively leaches out rare earth oxides with remarkable purity (up to 99.5 percent) while avoiding the harsh chemicals that can damage rare earths and other valuable metals like aluminum.

The pilot program has already diverted approximately 47,000 pounds of hard drives, SSDs, and mounting caddies from landfills or less effective recycling streams. According to Western Digital, the process has recovered over 90 percent of the rare earth elements and about 80 percent of all shredded material by mass.

The environmental benefits are substantial. A life cycle analysis cited in Western Digital’s whitepaper estimates that the new process generates 95 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than traditional mining and refining methods. By keeping the entire rare earth oxide production process within the United States, the initiative also reduces transportation emissions and strengthens the resilience of the domestic supply chain.

Microsoft, which provided the initial batch of drives for the program, sees this as a crucial step toward a more circular economy in tech. “HDDs are vital to our data center infrastructure, and advancing a circular supply chain is a core focus for Microsoft,” said Chuck Graham, the company’s corporate vice president for cloud sourcing, supply chain, sustainability, and security. “This pilot program has shown that a sustainable and economically viable end-of-life management for HDDs is achievable.”

The technology behind the recycling process was originally developed at the Critical Materials Innovation Hub at Ames National Laboratory and has been scaled from lab to demonstration in just eight years.

The potential impact of this program is vast. According to the Financial Times, there were 23,000 data centers housing 70 million servers in 2022 – each containing multiple hard drives that typically last only three to five years. Meanwhile, global e-waste is projected to reach 75 million tons by 2030.

“Western Digital is currently expanding the HDD rare earth material capture program based on the successful pilot with Microsoft,” Jackie Jung, WD’s VP of global operations strategy and corporate sustainability, told Tom’s Hardware. “This program is now in development with a number of our hyperscale customers.”