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Paper short abstract

This paper discusses the new modes of technospheric governance emerging with the mining of energy waste for rare earth elements, emphasizing the ambivalent tensions between well-intended attempts of upcycling geo-chemical waste and the undue appropriation of historical violence and harm.

Paper long abstract

The growing demand for Rare Earth elements has prompted renewed interest in industrial waste as a potential source of rare earth minerals and metals deemed critical to a less resource-intensive economy. With total demand expected to double or triple by 2040-2050, governments are making substantial investments in developing new methods for separating chemical elements from processed geological materials to meet the projected surge. Building on current attempts to mine energy waste inherited from the Soviet period in Estonia, this talk discusses the techno-scientific imaginaries undergirding the shift from primary to secondary extraction, paying particular attention to the narrow calculus of energy in the transition from waste to product in the name of a resource-efficient, circular economy. The speculative engagement with the geo-chemical properties of industrial waste hinges on computational and calculative techniques in which the violence of forced labour and disposession this waste embodies no longer registers, and the uneven distribution of risks, utility and value attached to human and non-human labour is both reconstituted and normalised. In this way, secondary extraction can be understood as the optimisation of metabolic flows for accumulation, ushering in modes of techno-spheric governance that thrive on the collective fallout of historical violence and harm.