material extinction

Earth’s Natural Wealth: an Audit explores the depletion of exotic materials necessary for manufacturing high-tech products through a series of intense infographics. The lesson is that some of our most desirable elements (Indium for LCD screens, Gallium for lasers and LEDs) are set to become completely extinct with ten or twenty years with no substitute and – most importantly – no way to recover them from the countless computer components they are a part of. Either we can prepare to go without displays or we need to design them in a way that their precious components can be readily restored and re-used.