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by dave_b 2309 days ago
According to that, we should be just about out of antimony by now. Yet somehow the market for drugs and batteries still seems to be humming along. 2/10 fear porn.
1 comments

Even better is only 80 years for aluminum, the third most common mineral in Earth's crust, constituting 8% of its weight. What an absurd alarmism.
Even if we can't get more. It's not like we're using it in a nuclear reaction that turns aluminium into something else. The aluminium is still there.
Not to mention how incredibly recyclable it is. In the US alone aluminum is made from scrap >30% percent of the time [1].

[1]: https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/aluminum-statistics-and-in... (click on an annual PDF).

And after 4 generations, less than 1% of the original material remains.

   percent remaining = 100 * (r^generations))
Where r is expressed as a decimal 0 <= r <=1.

Even at 90% recovery, over 90% of the original material is lost after 22 generations. The highest recycling rate of any material in the US is lead (mostly from auto batteries). The USGS reports that rate as ~70%, though this may be the amount of recycled material in new production.