Sustainability In Your Ear: Buckstop's Alexander Olesen Digs Into Urban Mining

"Every solar array, battery system, and EV charger installed over the past decade will eventually need to be decommissioned. Yet there's no unifying system to handle that flow of materials-no operating system for the reverse supply chain that the circular economy depends on. While Americans recycle 97% of vehicles, we recycle less than 20% of electronics, leaving valuable critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and gold to languish in warehouses or end up in landfills."

"Meet Alexander Olesen, co-founder and CEO of , an urban mining company launched in early 2025 to build what he calls "the intelligence layer for the circular economy." He previously founded Babylon Micro Farms , which develops distributed vertical farming systems, and he returns to Sustainability In Your Ear to share his new mission: creating a sustainable end-of-use solution for every electronic device on Earth."

"Buckstop took just three months to deploy its "algorithmic assay," a method of deconstructing finished goods into their raw materials and critical minerals at scale, something that wasn't possible to do efficiently before the advent of AI. The result: asset owners can now see the granular value of their deployed electronics in unprecedented detail. The scrap value of electronics typically yields only 1-5% recovery, but resale value can reach 20-30%."

Every solar array, battery system, and EV charger installed over the past decade will eventually require decommissioning, yet no unified operating system exists for reverse supply chains. Americans recycle 97% of vehicles but less than 20% of electronics, leaving lithium, cobalt, gold and other critical minerals to accumulate in warehouses or landfills. Urban electronic infrastructure contains vast refined materials treated as waste rather than resources. Buckstop deployed an "algorithmic assay" using AI to deconstruct finished goods into raw materials at scale, revealing granular asset value and increasing recovery potential from typical scrap rates of 1–5% to resale potential of 20–30%, creating substantial recovered value for large asset owners.

Read at Earth911