There’s a looming copper shortage. This South Carolina startup wants to mine it from waste instead of ore

The world faces a looming copper shortage: By 2040, demand could grow by 50%, driven by everything from electric cars to the surge in data centers. At the same time, supply is expected to drop, leaving a shortfall of 10 million metric tons, according to an S&P analysis. Already, supply shortages have pushed copper prices to record highs this year. In Charleston, South Carolina, a startup called Red Metals is racing to build more American supply through urban mining—pulling copper from old products and scrap rather than extracting the metal from increasingly depleted copper mines. Right now, only around half of the copper in existing products is recovered at their end of life. In the U.S., the scrap that’s recycled is often sent overseas for refining before being sent back. The current system uses “a very fragmented global supply chain,” says Jackson Switzer, founder and CEO of Red Metals. “That, for me as an engineer, is just extremely inefficient.” Switzer previously worked at Redwood Materials, the lithium-ion battery recycling and reuse giant, where he saw both how much copper was available in old products like electric motors, and how much demand for the material was growing. (JB Straubel, the Tesla cofounder who leads Redwood, is an investor in Red Metals.) “Copper is used absolutely everywhere, and it’s so critical to nearly everything,” Switzer says. But, he adds, “the supply chain was designed for a different era.” [Photo: Red Metals] The copper challenge Copper futures hit a new high this week, up 38% over last year, as the supply chain grapples with a range of challenges. A big copper mine in Indonesia is still recovering from a deadly accident last year, and won’t return to full production until 2028. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a copper mine shut down temporarily after its wastewater flooded nearby neighborhoods, polluting drinking water and farms. In Chile, another major mine has been affected by labor strikes and an earthquake.