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Despite good experiences with traditional recycling policies we are losing ground when it comes to the future use of rare earth and industrially important metals such as copper.In the 70th years of last century the idea of full scale recycling really startled the throw away society.But recycling paper, glass, batteries, aluminum and even the residues of smoke desulfurization turned out to be feasible and even a source of prosperity once a price tag was planted on waste.Optimizing the recycling chain remains an ongoing key challenge to industry and regulators.While optimizing existing recycling chains will stay an issue of circular economy, with rare earth and metals such as copper we have to start this process right again.This issue is of strategic importance not only for mere economic issues of industrial sourcing, but also for ecologic and social reasons, and the geopolitics of low carbon strategies.Those minerals are needed for electronic devices of all kinds, in particular for integrated mobility and energy networks, electro-mobility, a major switch to decentral and renewable energies, for measuring and verification schemes, and even some extreme future bound technologies for using CO2 as resource.Currently mainstream policies are occupied with old concepts of stock piling and with altercations about export restrictions and access to mining areas.This must not stay so.Technologies are key and must be flanked by regulatory innovation.