It’s March. And that doesn’t just mean that spring is around the corner – we’re also kicking off another month of highlighting yet another critical mineral. While in previous months, or educational campaign has focused on industrial and high-tech metals and minerals, our Metal of the Month of March – silver – really highlights the breadth of our metals and minerals needs.

By definition a “precious” metal like gold, it may come as a surprise to those who see silver primarily as shiny adornment or a means to store value that the biggest end users of silver may actually be specialized industries. Anthony David highlights some of the lesser-known applications of silver for Critical Strategic Metals:

Meanwhile, after demand has increased in recent months, this trend will likely continue courtesy of emerging technologies. Among them are:

If that alone wasn’t reason enough to feature silver as our Metal of the Month, consider this: in spite of the fact that the United States is home to significant silver deposits, our import dependency rate for the precious metal currently stands at 75 percent – with further challenges for domestic producers on the horizon, as we’ll discuss in a further post in our series.