Canada should target industrial waste streams

By Lethbridge Herald on December 30, 2025.

Apoorv Sinha
Quoi Media

Do you know where the copper in your microwave came from? Or the rare earth elements that make your TV or laptop screen capable of high definition? Chances are, they traveled thousands of kilometers, extracted from remote mines in countries with fragile supply chains.

Meanwhile, millions of tonnes of critical minerals lie dormant in Canada’s own backyard – locked in mine tailings, coal ash and industrial residues.

With Prime Minister Carney’s recently tabled budget and announcements of major projects, Canada has declared its ambition to become a critical mineral superpower. The federal strategy rightly points to our geological abundance. But the reality is stark: most domestic deposits are remote, expensive to access and years away from production.

Canada is decades behind building the infrastructure we need to unlock our growth in this sector. We also consistently miss economic targets, climate commitments and struggle with volatile unemployment – especially for our youth. We need solutions that deliver impact on all three fronts now – not in 15 years.

One answer is hiding in plain sight: industrial waste streams.

Across Canada, legacy mining sites and coal plants hold billions of dollars’ worth of rare earth elements (REEs), nickel, cobalt and other critical metals. These resources are co-located at existing industrial hubs, meaning they can be tapped without long-drawn permitting processes.

Most importantly, recovering these minerals can go hand-in-hand with environmental remediation, turning liabilities into assets, helping local communities restore and reinvent themselves.

This is not a pipe dream. Canadian innovators are already proving it works. Calgary’s Carbon Upcycling Technologies, as one example, has developed an Advanced Mineral Recovery (AMR) process that can extract up to 75 per cent of critical metals and 50-80 per cent of REEs from waste streams.

The residual material? It doesn’t need to go back to landfills – it can be transformed instead into low-carbon building materials, reducing emissions in one of the world’s most important heavy industries.

Circularity in action, this process can enable building local infrastructure in Canada’s most remote communities.   

Global momentum is clear. Countries like Australia, South Korea, Japan and the United States are accelerating investments in critical mineral extraction and processing. Australia has committed billions to rare earth projects, while the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act is catalyzing domestic supply chains for EV batteries.

Korea and Japan have gone further – creating long-term market signals through structured incentives for hydrogen and clean fuels, paired with ramp-down timelines similar to carbon capture, storage and utilization (CCUS) investment tax credits (ITCs).

These policies don’t just subsidize – they create urgency and conviction for private capital to deploy at scale.

Canada needs a similar approach: clear, time-bound incentives that reward early movers and taper over time, signaling that the window for advantage is now.

Canada has always been a nation defined by its natural resources – forests, oil, minerals – often exported as raw materials to fuel prosperity elsewhere. Fur trade between the 1600 and 1800s formed the economic foundation of early Canada, centered on beaver pelts used in European hat-making, while the discovery of gold and silver in the 1850s, and subsequently, uranium, nickel and other base metals shaped Canada’s economy for much of its history.

Onshoring critical mineral production through circular, fast-tracked projects like waste reclamation offers a chance to rewrite that story.

We have an opportunity to evolve from a resource exporter to a technology-driven economy, launching another generation of productivity and wealth while meeting climate commitments.

The question is simple: Does Canada keep exporting raw resources – or build the next economy from yesterday’s waste?  If we get this right, Canada won’t just kickstart the future economy, build productivity and growth for its citizens, but also lead the world in building a circular economy powered by innovation, not just extraction.

Apoorv Sinha is the founder and CEO of Carbon Upcycling Technologies (CUT) based in Calgary. CUT is building the world’s first integrated, commercial-scale CO2-to-Value plant in Mississauga, Ontario.

©Quoi Media