Do you know what your smartphone is made of? Have you ever thought about what happens when you throw it? And what about bigger items, like electrical cars?
Welcome to DiscoveREEs, a short online experience which will answer all of these questions!
As part of the Horizon 2020 project SecREEts and in collaboration with the Horizon 2020 project SUSMAGPRO, we are launching our first Virtual Citizen Lab, to learn more about Rare Earth Elements and why they are so important in our modern lives.
What is a Virtual Citizen lab?
In SecREEts, Prospex Institute is organising regular workshops with local communities around the pilot sites of SecREEts, to help build trust between our industry partners and their neighbours. These workshops are called Citizen Labs, they are a space where members of the local community can get to learn about rare earths, the SecREEts project and the activities taking place nearby and to voice concerns or flag opportunities.
But in discussions with other projects and EU-funded initiatives working on critical raw materials, we realised that the question is not just local but European: most people in Europe do not know about rare earths and why they are an essential part of their daily lives.
This is where the idea came from: what about making the Citizen Labs a virtual, online experience? This is how the Virtual Citizen Lab came to be: we created this platform as a tool to help raise awareness of rare earths for anyone who is wondering what their smartphone is made of!
Curious about what rare earths are? Then dive into DiscoveREEs and spread the word!
These two projects have received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 776559 (SecREEts) and No 821114 (SUSMAGPRO).