“Watch your step.”

On a brisk November morning, I found myself at Savin Hill Cove, where the Neponset River meets the Atlantic Ocean just south of Boston. This is one of the sites of the Green Harbors Project, an environmental restoration program founded and directed Dr. Anamarija Frankic. An ecologist and Biomimicry Fellow at UMass Boston, she and her students are using biomimicry – the application of nature-inspired solutions – to revolutionize the health and function of Boston’s harbor.

In her bright yellow windbreaker and tall blue rain boots, Dr. Frankic expertly leads me through coastal underbrush down to the water, where she points out debris and pollution that plague the cove. Over the course of several decades – even centuries — urban wastewater and nutrient-rich pollution have destroyed Boston’s coastal habitats, creating dead zones devoid of vegetation and aquatic wildlife.

After Vice President George H. W. Bush declared it “the dirtiest” harbor in America in 1988, Boston finally launched a massive multi-billion dollar cleanup project that spanned over a decade. The project culminated in a Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant renovation that installed a 9.5 mile pipeline which diverted raw sewage beyond the harbor and out into the ocean. While the water quality has improved, Frankic knows more must be done to restore a resilient and sustainable coastal ecosystem in this urban harbor. To do so, she’s enlisted the help of a natural ally: oysters.

Oysters from a reef in Savin Hill Cove. Photo: Ron Cowie

Oysters were once an abundant feature of Boston’s colonial-era harbor. Records from the 1630s describe oyster banks large enough to keep boats from navigating Boston’s rivers, and oyster shells were even a popular material for paving colonial Boston’s streets. By the beginning of the 20^th century, however, overfishing, pollution, and habitat degradation from landfill and dams drove the native oyster population to extinction.

Why bring oysters back? Oysters are natural filtration machines: as filter feeders, oysters naturally remove overabundant micronutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous from the water. In fact, one adult oyster can purify 50 gallons of water per day. Simply by existing, oysters improve water quality and make aquatic environments more conducive for other forms of life.

Oysters’ abilities are not limited to water filtration: oyster reefs also stabilize coastal sediment from erosion, provide shelter for creatures like snails and crabs that like to hide in the crevices between oysters, and are a food source for larger organisms, like birds and humans. An increase in their population could even help the Massachusetts fishing economy.

In an adjacent cove, Dr. Frankic and I carefully make our way down a rocky slope to the water at low tide to check the health of an oyster bed she established in 2013. What was once a desolate cove now holds a giant cluster of 150,000 oysters. As we explore the bed, Frankic’s admiration of oysters bubbles up to the surface. “Oysters are smart. They like to live together, to be close to one another for support and for protection.”

Oyster beds stretch out into the water at Savin Hill Cove. The UMass Boston campus sits on the horizon.
Photo: Ron Cowie

Frankic then draws my attention to abundant slimy, leafy plants that line the rocky shore, suitably named rockweed. Its existence here is a good sign – an indication that the oysters are helping to reestablish a livable habitat.

Despite signs of the project’s progress, there is still more work to be done. Her UMass Boston students are busy restoring eelgrass and salt marsh grasses – plants that work in tandem with oyster reefs to attract aquatic life – and exploring other natural technologies to facilitate the process of coastal ecosystem recovery.

And sometimes, there are setbacks. As we walked further into the oyster bed, Frankic stopped short. “Someone was here,” she said grimly. “This area has been raked.” Sure enough, a long strip of bare sand cut through the bed. This is the first time she has ever seen the bed damaged. When asked why someone would do this, Frankic was at a loss – perhaps it was an accident, an act of hostility, or someone harvesting the oysters to eat or to sell.

Dr. Frankic (right) and her students regularly perform research to analyze ecosystem health.
Photo: Green Harbors Project

Dr. Frankic is used to challenges in her career. After growing up on a small Croatian island and attending university in Zagreb, she commenced a nonlinear journey to ecosystem restoration. “I didn’t have a simple track. I just went like organic growth, like a sprout of mold going everywhere.” Her aptitude for holistic and interdisciplinary thinking, however, meant overcoming professional challenges. “I tried to fit the form in science, in academia, in government, in the World Bank and the UN,” she recalls, but time and time again she became frustrated by a culture of fragmentation and compartmentalization, and a lack of collaboration across sectors.

Tired of compromising efficacy to conform to the status quo, Frankic carved out a niche of her own creation. In addition to teaching at UMass Boston and two universities in Croatia, she also works to engage local residents, politicians, fisherman, and elementary school students in ecosystem restoration.

She works as an educator to make it easier for future generations to follow a holistic path like hers. “Education needs to follow the needs of the next generation, and we are not very good in that,” she says. Rather than create reactionary solutions to environmental problems, she wants her students to be leaders that proactively create healthy and thriving environments. By empowering students to perform exploratory field research and question existing systems, she hopes her students will promote positive change in the world.

Already, the positive ripples from the Green Harbors Project are spreading beyond Boston. Dr. Frankic now has oyster restoration projects in Cape Cod, Nantucket, and internationally in her native Croatia. Similar initiatives have been adopted in Brooklyn and the Chesapeake Bay. Inexpensive and low-maintenance, oysters are a natural, simple, and extremely effective tool that can improve aquatic ecosystem health around the world. “Water is life,” she reminds me. “We have to let the water teach us how to build our cities.”

When considering progress to address the climate crisis by reducing fossil fuel use, many people may think of the Paris Climate Agreement. However, Alyssa Lee’s career redefines the scale of success in the climate movement. Rather than relying on politicians and diplomats to shape the future of our planet, divestment campaigns at colleges across the United States are empowering young people to take control of the world that they want to live in.

Alyssa Lee wearing a 350 Mass Action T-shirt. 350 Mass Action is the volunteer grassroots group affiliated with the Better Future Project.

In September of 2015, Alyssa left her home in
sunny California to join the Better Future Project in Boston, Massachusetts. The Better Future Project is a non-profit organization that works to promote grassroots movements to address climate change. Working as a campus organizer, Alyssa pioneered the new Climate Justice Fellowship Program for Massachusetts college students. This fellowship provides mentoring, training, and helps establish connections among students seeking to start or strengthen their own divestment campaigns on campus.

Alyssa succinctly states the goal of college divestment campaigns as “putting pressure on school administrators to consider whether it is ethical to profit from fossil fuels.”

Students can take control of what Alyssa describes as their “access to power.” Through these campaigns, students can realize their ability to make a change by putting the spotlight on school administrators. This type of public exposure is all part of a larger mission to stigmatize or brand fossil fuels as undesirable.

Interestingly, Alyssa points out that many colleges don’t have direct investments in fossil fuels, yet school administrators still refuse to take a public stance on the issue. It may seem strange for students to fight so hard for divestment when their schools don’t actually have fossil fuel investments. However, divestment campaigns are symbolically important.

Although money often equates to power, reputation is everything. When colleges refuse to take a stance against the fossil fuel industry, they perpetuate its “social license to operate.” This legitimacy allows fossil fuel companies to continue operating, generating pollution, and contributing to the climate crisis. Divestment challenges this legitimacy by raising opposition to fossil fuels and publically questioning the acceptability of college administrators profiting from this industry.

The fossil fuel divestment movement was born at Swarthmore College in 2011. Since the movement started, there have been notable divestment wins at two-dozen colleges across the country. This past May, University of Massachusetts Amherst became the first major public university to divest its endowment from fossil fuels, with the president proudly stating, “Important societal change often begins on college campuses and it often begins with students.” Despite these successes, many college students face challenges mobilizing movements on their campuses.

This is where Alyssa comes in.

Through the Climate Justice Fellowship, Alyssa provides coaching to college students struggling with their leadership roles on campus and the difficulty inherent in positions of power. “People feel uncomfortable being asked to lead. They hesitate to delegate and ask for people’s time, push people, and make decisions.”

What qualifies Alyssa to guide these students?

Alyssa speaks from personal experience. She was a devoted leader and organizer as a student at UCLA up until she graduated in 2014. During her time, Alyssa co-founded a student-run food cooperative and started the Fossil Free UCLA divestment campaign. Alyssa recalls that, as she became an organizer, “a lot of people I respected told me to step into a role I may be uncomfortable with.” It’s easy to see why Alyssa was asked to step up to the plate — she’s a natural organizer, balancing both charisma and optimism. Alyssa went on to train at the Divestment Student Network her senior year, while continuing her critical role in her own school’s divestment campaign.

In addition to mentorship, the Climate Justice Fellowship fosters a sense of solidarity among students fighting for divestment across Massachusetts. Young leaders come together monthly, where they receive training and form cross-campus relationships. These connections help form a broad network of support as students face the daunting task of confronting school administrators and one of the most powerful industries in the world. Alyssa helped to coordinate a cross-campus effort between Amherst, Lowell, Dartmouth, and Boston, bringing these schools together for the first time. Previous fellows have emphasized the importance of these relationships as a source of inspiration and reassurance. Nina Hazelton, a spring 2016 fellow from UMass Amherst, stated, “every time we get together, we are shifting power.”

In the efforts to provide mentoring, training, and connections among schools, Alyssa admits that time for conversation regarding environmental justice issues such as pollution from fossil fuel production and transportation is limited. The “main problem is that we assume many people already know. We all take it for granted.” However, referring to the pollution associated with fossil fuel production and transport, Alyssa said with full sincerity, “I would love to spend fellowship training talking about this.”

Issues of environmental justice are what sparked Alyssa’s passion towards divestment as a student—leading her to the role that she plays now in supporting many other divestment campaigns across Massachusetts.

After so many campaigns, including the UCLA campaign in which the school did not fully divest from fossil fuels, one might think Alyssa would be worn out. However, when asked how she deals with disappointment, Alyssa acknowledged that many divestment campaigns do hear no. But “each disappointing moment should never be bad, it is just momentum for the next thing. Every moment is an opportunity. The next action will always push forward.”

In the spring of 2015, Helena McMonagle, a college student, collected samples for her Sea Semester project in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. With fine meshed plankton nets, she trawled the top of the ocean. But with the plankton came the unexpected.

“I was so surprised to be in a place that seemed so remote and so pristine. But then you pull up this plankton net and there is plastic in there and evidence of human waste. It was really shocking how much plastic we found.”

Plastic found by Helena. Photo credit: Amy Siuda (Chief Scientist)

For the past 45 years, Sea Semester (SEA) has been training the next generation of oceanographers about marine environmental issues by getting them out of the classroom and onto the ocean. Integral to Helena’s experience was one of her mentors, Dr. Erik Zettler. A recently retired Sea Semester professor and current researcher with SEA in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Dr. Erik Zettler has been pivotal in research on marine plastic debris. Utilizing the research power of undergraduates, Dr. Zettler has investigated the living communities whose homes are on our plastic. He calls these plastic communities the “Plastisphere.”

Dr. Erik Zettler at work. Photo credit: http://www.sea.edu/plastics/team/erik_zettler

These communities may be small, but they have large and devastating impacts. These pieces of plastic transport harmful creatures as they drift in the ocean’s currents, including human pathogens and algae responsible for toxic red algae tides.

With about eight million tons of plastic entering the oceans every year– the equivalent of two empire state buildings every month– the fate of this plastic and its consequences are worth investigating.

For 22 years, Dr. Zettler has investigated microbial communities, focusing on the Plastisphere in the past decade. Before working for Sea Semester, he was a research technician at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He was attracted to SEA by their boats docked right across the street.  Sea Semester is known for their two sailboats, which look like relics of the 1700s with their huge white sails and two masts. In fact, they are sophisticated research vessels.

Sea Semester boat. Photo credit: https://syr-sa.terradotta.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=10287

Dr. Zettler realized Sea Semester was a perfect match when he got the opportunity to travel with them on a short research trip. “I absolutely loved it. It was a combination of everything I like,” he reminisced with a smile during our Skype conversation. “It’s fieldwork on a sailing boat, high quality science, and teaching. Three things I really enjoy in one, ” he said counting each aspect on a finger. When a permanent position became available in 1994, he joined Sea Semester full time.

Since his first ocean research voyage, Dr. Zettler has spent up to one-third of every year at sea doing research. But, he still depends a lot on student research. “All of my research at SEA pretty much was done through student research projects,” Dr. Zettler said appreciatively. “Essentially they’re acting as research assistants.” At SEA, students like Helena McMonagle help with ideas, processing and analyzing the samples, and collecting data.

“They treated us like colleagues,” Helena described of her time working with Dr. Zettler and his wife, Dr. Amaral-Zettler. “It was empowering.” And it is easy to see why his students respected him so much.

During our Skype conversation, Dr. Zettler was modest and friendly, seeming more like an engaging professor and sea-weathered researcher in his blue fleece and wire-rimmed glasses, than a renowned researcher. He has worked on more than 30 published papers, including a 2015 paper that was featured in the Falmouth Enterprise, a local Massachusetts paper.

The paper discussed policy implications of the Plastisphere, the composition of which Dr. Zettler and other Woods Hole based researchers discovered is dependent on its location. Plastics in the North Atlantic Ocean had different organisms, like disease causing pathogens, living on them than in the North Pacific Ocean. This is an important discovery because it means that plastic debris might have site-specific effects on the environment and marine organisms that accidentally ingest the plastic. Political efforts to mitigate the impacts of marine plastic debris will require equally regionally specific efforts.

Dr. Zettler clearly loves the research he does, but he also highlighted the importance of policy in bridging the divide between science and change—a bridge this 2015 paper starts to build.

“You have to stop plastic at the source, which is land,” he emphasized, when I asked what we must do now to solve our marine plastic debris problem. He stressed the importance of minimizing the use of single-use plastic. Single-use plastics are about half of the 300,000,000 million tons of plastic created every year, and some of it can be replaced by biodegradable materials, which can be industrially composted. Examples of policies that minimize single-use plastics include plastic bag bans and fees.

Stopping plastic at its source is especially important because researchers don’t know where most of the plastic is ending up once it gets into the ocean. “We are putting in eight million tons of plastic every year, but when we try to count the plastic that’s floating, we find only 300,000 tons” Dr. Zettler said. That’s like the weight of 20 empire state buildings going missing every year. This means that marine plastic debris may be having other unknown effects on oceanic ecosystems.

With the help of Sea Semester student research, maybe Dr. Zettler will solve that mystery.  For now, he continues to lay the foundation for future policy that will alleviate our ocean’s plastic pollution crisis and impacts of the Plastisphere.

It’s a crisp, sunny fall day perfect for pressing fresh apple cider. I’m at the Tobin Montessori School in Cambridge to volunteer at one of CitySprouts’ annual cider pressings and speak with Andrea Locke, their Community Relations Director. CitySprouts is a non-profit organization that partners with public schools to build school gardens and incorporate them into the curriculum. It began in two Cambridge schools in 2001 and has since expanded to include 24 public schools in Boston and Cambridge.

Andrea and I find a spot to sit on the leaf-strewn lawn of the school, with the garden plots behind us, and begin discussing her journey to CitySprouts. Although she has only been working for the organization since last spring, it is clear that she believes in the CitySprouts mission, especially its commitment to experiential learning.

Andrea is a firm believer in the idea of “learning best by getting your hands dirty.” She explains that planting seeds and watching them grow is “very hands-on” and “a very visceral experience that I just think is vital to learning.”

Andrea Locke, Community Relations Director of CitySprouts

As a native of the Finger Lakes region of New York, Andrea grew up playing in gardens. When it was time to go to college, she chose Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. Warren Wilson is a very different from a typical college because, as Andrea explains it, “The entire campus is run by students.” She worked in the Office of Admissions, but other students were responsible for doing the plumbing and electricity, and everyone had to work on the 500-acre farm that provided the food for the campus.

“I feel like a lot of my life experiences have been building on each other,” Andrea explains. Her major at Warren Wilson was History and Political Science. It wasn’t until she attended graduate school at the Lund Institute in Sweden that she became more interested in social policy, which led her into the nonprofit world. Before CitySprouts, Andrea worked as an AmeriCorps VISTA member with Give US Your Poor, a Boston organization which seeks to increase public awareness of homelessness. That experience, she says, helped her gain many of the skills she is using in her work today, especially social media skills.

As Community Relations Director, Andrea is responsible for cultivating and maintaining relationships with donors as well as arranging volunteers for events such as the cider pressings. One of her goals for this year is to get the students’ families more involved with CitySprouts. As she was arranging the volunteers for cider pressing, she tried to get as many parents involved as possible. She is also responsible for planning the spring fundraising event, Dig It!, and has lowered the ticket prices to encourage more parents to come.

The importance of fundraising for a non-profit cannot be understated. None of CitySprouts’ work would be possible without Andrea’s work. In addition to the school partnership program, CitySprouts offers an after-school program and a summer program for middle school students. Adequate fundraising allows them to provide these programs free for all students, permitting more children from lower-income families to participate.

The school garden plots that CitySprouts helps the students to tend do not produce enough vegetables to supply the cafeteria, so instead the students or teachers take home the produce to share it with their families. Andrea also tells me that they like to allow some of it to “die on the vine,” so that students can see how vegetables decompose and understand that as a part of nature.

CitySprouts does, however, interact with the school cafeterias in other ways. Andrea tells me that the cafeteria staff will sometimes use fresh herbs from the garden. Last spring, the 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th graders in CitySprouts’ after-school program each developed their own sauce for the local coconut-crusted redfish that is served in Cambridge cafeterias. The students voted to select their favorite, and the winning sauce is now served in all Cambridge cafeterias.

CitySprouts Summer Program

The summer program allows middle school students to engage more with the gardens and understand the larger food system. The lunches provided to the students as a part of the program are made with the produce they helped to grow. Furthermore, the activities encourage them to consider the larger food system outside of the garden plot. In one assignment, they imagine the journey of a product from the farm to the grocery store and calculate what percentage of the final price goes to the farmer. The students also volunteer at Gaining Ground, a farm in Concord that provides produce for food pantries, which gives them the opportunity to see how a full-scale farm operates.

Today, nutrition is often broken down into nutrients and calories, but CitySprouts takes a more holistic view. Andrea explains, “we believe that introducing vegetables and just getting students more familiar with them will just make them more comfortable, so when they see it again, they’re more likely to eat it.”

She also appreciates the sense of ownership the CitySprouts method gives the kids. She explains how the little kids will plant the beans, measure them, watch them grow, “and then they eat the beans, and they really like them,” she concludes, visibly giddy.

The cider pressings are a little bit different than the majority of CitySprouts events. Although it is still hands-on, it is less of an educational event and more of a fun one to get the kids outside to see the garden and involve teachers who have not used the garden in their curriculum. The apples are from Kimball Farm, about 40 miles outside of Boston, and are what is known as “second-pick” apples, “so they’re pretty gnarly looking, but it makes no difference for cider,” Andrea explains.

As a Texas native, I’ve never made cider, so I get a quick explanation of the process before the next class comes out. I am at the chopping station, helping the students to cut the apples into chunks with butter knives. After the washing, chopping and mashing have been completed, we all gather around the cider press, a wood and red-painted metal contraption that, like the apple masher, looks most akin to something the pioneers would have used.

A CitySprouts cider pressing

We all take turns helping to twist the press until it is tight and then to pump the lever until all the juice is squeezed out of the mashed apples. Next, we distribute the cider in compostable paper cups, and ask the students to wait to drink because we are going to do a toast. Since apple cider pressing is a fall tradition in New England, we decide to toast to fall. We all say “To Fall!,” clink our paper cups together, and have a sip. It’s easily the best apple cider I’ve ever had and the kids can’t get enough of it.

Marion Emmert checks the progress of a chemical reaction that will recover the valuable metals found in electric car engines. Source: WPI

When you first enter the office of chemist Marion Emmert, not only will you see bookshelves of academic chemistry textbooks, but also a miniature rubber duck, a goat plushie, and cartoon strips. Emmert especially prizes her goat stuffed animal, Gompei, who also happens to be the university mascot. She won him in a faculty contest. “I’m very competitive,” she says with a mischievous grin.

Emmert is an associate professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a university that specializes in real-world applications of science and engineering. In September, Professor Emmert and postdoctoral fellow H.M. Dhammika Bandara became some of the first people to successfully recycle the rare earth elements (REEs) inside of broken electric/hybrid car motors. REEs are the magic ingredients inside many modern technologies. In electric cars and wind turbines, REEs act as powerful magnets that make the engines run more efficiently. REE magnets are irreplaceable, because they are as much as five times stronger than other magnets. REEs also increase the computing abilities of laptops, phones, and tablets, and are used in diverse fields such as medicine and military defense systems.

The development of REE recycling is especially important because the U.S. needs its own domestic REE supply. During the past fifteen years, China has controlled over 86% of the REE market, because it artificially keeps REE prices too low for other nations to compete. Securing domestic U.S. production of REE resources is a key driver of Emmert’s work. China’s control of REE prices is essentially a power play, she explained. By maintaining its REE monopoly, China can restrict U.S. access to these critical resources. This occurred in 2011, when China cut its REE exports by 40%. In the space of a year, REEs prices increased by as much as 600%. “We [the U.S.] didn’t have any solutions,” Emmert said bluntly. “We didn’t even have the knowledge or the technology to address this [lack of REE resources].” That’s a scary thought, especially because REEs are so important for many different technological applications.

Emmert’s new technique could allow the United States to become a more competitive, self-reliant player in the REE industry, independent from the volatile REE prices of Chinese suppliers. Even though the recycling process involves a series of complex chemical reactions, Emmert is used to explaining her research to a general audience.  Here’s the gist: electric and hybrid vehicle engines possess valuable amounts of REEs, but they’re difficult to separate from the other metals in the engine. However, unlike steel or copper, rare earth elements dissolve quickly in certain acids, such as hydrochloric acid. By soaking the engines in these acids, Emmert can isolate the REEs from the rest of the recycled engine. This process works so well that Emmert’s team can recover over 80% of the REEs in the electric car engines. The recovered REEs are 99.9% pure.

For Emmert, finding a new source of REEs is not only about competing in a monopolized REE market – it’s also about recycling them in a way that minimizes environmental and human health impacts. “This is dear to my heart,” Emmert said. “People don’t always understand. To be environmentally friendly, it’s not just about safety for nature, but also for the people. People are part of the environment.” In contrast to many scientists’ energy-intensive recycling methods and use of dangerous concentrations of acids to recover valuable metals, Emmert’s recycling process minimizes waste, increases energy efficiency, and reduces safety hazards. For example, Emmert designed the REE recovery process so that waste by-products such as corrosive acids could be reused, instead of ending up in a landfill. She also used these acids in low quantities, so as not to endanger the humans handling the products. “It’s really cool. [Recycling REEs] is so simple [and safe] that you could do it in your house! But I wouldn’t suggest it,” she added quickly.

On its own, Emmert’s REE recycling method is remarkably environmentally friendly. However, perhaps the greatest advantage of the new recycling process is its potential to reduce the environmental impacts associated with REE mining. Mining currently supplies all of the world’s REE demand, but it also produces enormous amounts of pollution: just one ton of REEs produces over 66 tons of waste! While much of this waste is composed of waste rock, significant portions of it are either radioactive or contain dangerous waste acids. In fact, the U.S. shut down its largest REE mine partly because it leaked hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive wastewater into the surrounding environment.

By utilizing recycled REE, the U.S. can lessen its reliance on virgin materials. Most importantly, ‘mining’ electric car engines for REEs does not produce radioactive waste. Using Emmert’s approach, even the acids needed to recycle REEs would be reused. Recycling offers a low-energy, low-waste source of REEs that reduces the need for environmentally destructive mining operations. And while electric/hybrid vehicle engines recycling alone cannot provide the U.S. with all of the REEs it needs, the same recycling process can be applied to other engines, such as wind turbines, which can contain over 800 pounds of REEs each.

Before Emmert patented her recycling process in September 2015, mining was the only way to acquire REEs. She hopes that within a few years, the U.S. will construct the first commercial REE recycling facility based on her research. But there are two major challenges. First, the recycling process has only proven to be successful in a small-scale, laboratory setting. Recycling thousands of engines on a daily basis will pose new technological and implementation challenges. Second, REE recycling lacks commercial viability. Between 2002 and 2013, the price of REEs varied greatly, from $12 to nearly $95 per kilogram. With such volatile prices, can REE recycling succeed in the real world? According to Emmert, the fickle nature of the prices is precisely the reason why companies should invest in recycling technology today. Businesses need to diversify their source for REEs. That way, if one source dries up, the company can rely on other suppliers. Although recycling may be more expensive in the short-term, Emmert argues that REE recycling can help preserve business sustainability for decades.  

Whether for economic sustainability, U.S. resource independence, or environmental preservation, REE recycling offers an important alternative to the status quo. “It’s in everyone’s best interest to diversify the economy,” Emmert said. Recycling may be the REE industry’s next great breakthrough in terms of both economic and environmental sustainability.