Ming Zhou

written by Deborah Dull, on site at GreenBiz 2026   I spent today in a room full of people who think about waste for a living. And the word that kept coming up had nothing to do with recycling. It was sovereignty. Here is the situation. The United States imports 95% of its critical mineral supply. Lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, the stuff inside every battery, every semiconductor, every electric motor. We do not make it, we do not mine much of it, and we do not control the supply chain that delivers it. That is not an energy policy problem. That is a national security problem. Now here is the part that should make you put down your coffee. A ton of smartphones contains dramatically more gold than a ton of mined ore. We are talking about concentrations that make urban mining look like a gold rush compared to digging in the ground. And yet the recovery rate for those materials, once a phone leaves its first owner, drops to around 13%. We are losing roughly 80% of the value sitting in devices right now, in drawers, in closets, in landfills. E-waste is also the fastest growing waste stream…

Stay up to date on all the latest conversations, interviews, and episodes we released this week here at Supply Chain Now. On Monday, we released 2 new episodes! On this episode of Digital Transformers, Kevin L. Jackson discusses how Enterprise Information Management Transforms with Mark Judson. On This Week in Business History, Scott Luton shares about 10 Cities with Business Ties You Didn’t Know! On Tuesday, we released an episode of TEKTOK with host, Karin Bursa. She was accompanied by Scott Luton and supply chain pioneer, Art Mesher. On Tuesday we also released an episode of TECHquila Sunrise with host Greg White and special guest Shannon Vaillancourt, CEO of Ratelinx. On Wednesday we released Supply Chain Today and Tomorrow hosted by Scott Luton and Greg White with special guest Mike Griswold from Gartner. On Thursday, we released a replay of the Supply Chain Buzz. In this episode, hosts Greg White and Scott Luton welcomed Jordon White from Crisp and Jerry Stephens from Outlier to discuss the current state of the food and retail supply chain. We ended the week on Friday with 2 episodes! We released another Dial P for Procurement episode! Hosts Kelly Barner and Scott Luton welcomed special…