Some of Earth’s plants have fallen in love with metal. This “juice” is actually one-quarter nickel, far more concentrated than the ore feeding the world’s nickel smelters. What if, as a partial substitute to traditional, energy-intensive and environmentally costly mining and smelting, the world harvested nickel plants? Every six to 12 months, a farmer shaves off one foot of growth from these nickel-hyper-accumulating plants and either burns or squeezes the metal out. After a short purification, farmers could hold in their hands roughly 500 pounds of nickel citrate, potentially worth thousands of dollars on international markets.

Source: International New York Times February 26, 2020 16:07 UTC