Rare Earth Metals — Rarely Understood

In Canada, we are blessed with a real abundance of natural resources. Not all countries are as fortunate. This is especially true in the case of what is commonly known as rare earth metals. Something which has featured prominently in the news of late.

Rare earth elements are a collection of chemical elements in the periodic table. They have uncommon names like Yttrium, Cerium, Gadolinium, Lanthanum, Praseodymium and Dysprosium.

Paradoxically, despite their description as ‘rare’, these elements are actually found in relatively high concentrations in the earth’s crust (the exception being promethium which is highly unstable). Cerium, in fact, is the 25^th most abundant element, with a concentration similar to copper at about 68 parts per million

CARI – Canada’s Recycling Association

One of the elements we always try to include on our web site and in our advertising is the symbol of the Canadian Association of Recycling Industries or CARI. We have been a member of this organization for many years and always do our best to support their mandate and various initiatives.

CARI’s Roots

Movie stars like Rita Hayworth doing their bit for the WW II recycling drive.

In 1941 the Canadian government called for a coordinated approach from industry to provide high quality scrap metal to support the war effort. Understandably metals were extremely scarce at this time. In fact, the United States Mint actually stopped making copper pennies altogether in 1943.

The Recycling Symbol…What’s That All About?

We recently received an interesting question from a high school student who contacted us after viewing our web site. She was doing a project on recycling and was curious about the recycling symbol in our logo and whether or not she could freely use the symbol in her project.

Recycling Symbol Designer Gary Anderson 1970

The original recycling symbol was designed in 1970 by Gary Anderson at the University of Southern California. He was just 23 years old at the time and his design was submitted to the International Design Conference as part of a nationwide contest sponsored by the Container Corporation of America (later part of Smurfit-Stone Container).