Reprinted from The Guardian; Dominick Calsolaro notes that this article supports his call for a Resource Recovery Center – June/July 2021 Save the Pine Bush Newsletter
Disc drives, circuit boards, fluorescent lamps and batteries for electric vehicles could be among affected products
Rare elements such as indium, yttrium, neodymium, cobalt and lithium are vital for the production of low-carbon technology, but many are being thrown away because of the lack of a requirement to recycle them, industry experts have warned.
Concern is growing over the future supply of such elements, as the switch to green technology – including electric vehicles, solar panels and low-carbon heating – will require far greater volumes of rare earths and other critical raw materials.
Industry experts have called for tougher rules on recycling, in a report from Cewaste, a two-year project funded by the EU as part of its Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The authors examined what happens to such materials currently, and their potential future supply and cost.
Recycling should be mandatory for the critical raw materials present in circuit boards; magnets used in disc drives and electric vehicles; batteries for electric vehicles; and fluorescent lamps, they concluded.
Pascal Leroy, the director-general of the WEEE Forum, one of the organisations behind the report published on Monday, said: “The supply of these materials is not assured – for example, some come from countries where there is political instability. But some of these materials are critical [for green technology in future]. This should be regulated through mandatory standards.”
While relatively low-value metals such as copper, iron and even platinum are frequently recycled, rare metals are ignored or thrown away, because their use is often in small quantities that recyclers deem too expensive to recover.
However, uncertainties over the future supply of such materials and rapidly increasing demand, driven by the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, could force a supply crunch in future for critical materials, which would not only raise prices but could prove highly disruptive to forging a green economy, the report’s authors found. Waiting for such price rises to make recycling economical would leave manufacturers highly vulnerable to future shocks, they said. . .
The International Energy Agency recently calculated that if the world is to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions in 2050, demand for critical and rare minerals will be six times higher than today by 2040. Demand for lithium alone will be 40 times higher in 2040 because of its use in batteries.
Fatih Birol, the executive director of the energy watchdog, said: “The data shows a looming mismatch between the world’s strengthened climate ambitions and the availability of critical minerals that are essential to realising those ambitions. Left unaddressed, these potential vulnerabilities could make global progress towards a clean energy future slower and more costly, and therefore hamper international efforts to tackle climate change.”
The IEA found that the production and processing of many materials, such as lithium, cobalt and rare earths, was highly concentrated in a handful of countries, with the top three producers accounting for more than three-quarters of global supplies. The Democratic Republic of the Congo produced 70% of cobalt and rare earths in 2019, and China produced 60%. China is also responsible for refining nearly 90% of the rare earths used globally.
