Rare metal recycling rates discouragingly low

The European Commission has called for action to realise the immense potential in metals recycling, after a new United Nations report showed less than a third of 60 key metals have a recycling rate above 50%.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, entitled Recycling Rates of Metals: A Status Report, shows that in particular recycling rates for high tech metals used in clean technologies such as hybrid car batteries and wind turbines are discouragingly low at below 1%.

It was published last week (May 26) alongside another UNEP report, entitled Decoupling natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth, which claims that the era of cheap and accessible ores for metals is running out.

The European Commission and UNEP said that together these reports showed that, without radical changes to increase metals recycling rates, critical, speciality and rare earth metals could become essentially unavailable for use in modern technology.

Specific actions called for in the UNEP report include:

• Addressing the large number of electronic products containing metals which are hibernating in places like drawers and closets, and also those like mobile phones which are sent to landfill;
• Encouraging product design which makes disassembly and material separation easier;
• Improving waste management and recycling infrastructure for complex end-of-life products in developing countries and emerging economics.

The scale of the challenge was outlined by one of the UNEP metal recycling reports authors, Professor Thomas Graedel, who said: By failing to recycle metals and simply disposing of these kinds of metals, economies are foregoing important environment benefits and increasing the possibility of shortages.

If we do not have these materials readily available at reasonable prices, a lot of modern technology simply cannot happen, he added.

Recycling rates

The UNEP metals recycling report shows that, globally, lead is the most recycled metal with nearly 80% of products containing lead mainly batteries being recycled when they reach end-of-life.

It also details recycling rates above 50% for iron and other main components of steel and stainless steel, as well as platinum, gold, silver and most other precious metals.

But, it highlights wide variations in recycling rates for some of these metals depending on where they are recovered from, with 70-90% of gold in industrial applications being recycled, compared to only 10-15% of gold in electronic goods.

Among the metals where recycling rates are particularly low are indium, which is used in semiconductors, energy efficient light emitting diodes (LEDs), advanced medical imaging and photovoltaics.

Other speciality metals such as tellurium and selenium used in solar cells and neodymium and dysprosium used in wind turbine magnets are also identified as an area of concern.

Commenting on the reports, the EC environment commissioner Janez Potcnik, said they showed the urgent need for a move to resource efficiency and claimed he was confident the EU would achieve this goal.

The Commission is now finalising a Roadmap towards a Resource Efficient Europe, which sets a transformational agenda and prepares the ground for the steps ahead, he said.

We now need effective dialogue with the Member States, as important decisions will be required in areas such as tax reform and eliminating inefficient subsidies. I also welcome the call for an increased focus on recycling