SEATTLE (Recycling Monster): Western Digital has partnered with Microsoft, Critical Materials Recycling, and PedalPoint Recycling to launch an initiative to recycle large-scale hard disk drives.

The "Advanced Recycling and Rare Earth Material Capture Program" aims to extract important materials, including rare earths, from data center drives that are nearing the end of their useful lives.

For data security, data center drives are frequently shredded when they reach the end of their useful lives. The majority of their precious components—such as steel, aluminum, and rare earth elements—end up in landfills. According to studies, data center drive degradation results in the production of large amounts of hazardous electrical waste for both the environment and people.

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Significant amounts of greenhouse gasses are released during the extremely energy-intensive process of mining new rare earth elements.

Under the new program, Microsoft's US data centers will donate their end-of-life drives, which PedalPoint Recycling will then sort and shred. The steel and retrieved magnets are delivered to Critical Materials Recycling, where a copper salt-based procedure is used to recover the rare earth elements.

Western Digital claims that the method can recover approximately 80% of all shredded material by mass and more than 90% of the rare earth elements.