NEW YORK: Moving the global economy towards environmentally-friendly, clean technologies will increasingly hinge on rapid improvements in the recycling rates of so called “high-tech” specialty metals like lithium, neodymium and gallium.
Such metals, needed to make key components for wind turbines and photovoltaics to the battery packs of hybrid cars, fuel cells and energy efficient lighting systems, exist in nature in relatively small supplies or in discreet geographical locations.
Yet despite concern among the clean tech industry over scarcity and high prices, only around one per cent of these crucial high-tech metals are recycled, with the rest discarded and thrown away at the end of a product’s life.
Unless future end-of-life recycling rates are dramatically stepped up these critical, specialty and rare earth metals could become “essentially unavailable for use in modern technology”, warn experts.
These are among the preliminary findings of a new report entitled Metals Recycling Rates to be issued by the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management hosted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
The report, the final version of which is to be published later in the year, also underlines the big energy and climate change gains that could be achieved if greater end-of-life recycling rates of more commonly known metals were achieved.
Metals such as iron and steel, copper, aluminum, lead and tin enjoy recycling rates of between 25 per cent and 75 per cent globally, with much lower rates in some developing economies.
Boosting those further through better collection systems and recycling infrastructure, especially in developing countries, could save millions if not billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions while also generating potentially significant numbers of green jobs.
This is because recycling metals is between two and ten times more energy efficient than smelting the metals from virgin ores, says the report.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, said: “Urgent action is now clearly needed to sustainably manage the supplies and flows of these specialty metals given their crucial role in the future health, penetration and competitiveness of a modern high-tech, resource-efficient Green Economy”.
“Boosting end-of-life recycling rates not only offers a path to enhancing those supplies and keeping metal prices down, but can also generate new kinds of employment while ensuring the longevity of the mines and the stocks found in nature,” he added.
“Meanwhile, improving the recycling rates of common, mass-produced metals such as copper and steel could also play an important part in meeting climate change targets and keeping the global temperature rise below 2 degrees C by 2050. There is currently a gap between the ambition of nations and the science amounting to several gigatonnes of CO2. Metals recycling could play a part in helping to bridge that gap,” said Mr Steiner.
Also launched today was another final report called Metals in Society. The two reports, presented during a meeting of the UN’s Commission on Sustainable Development in New York, are part of six being prepared on metals by the Panel.
The Panel is co-chaired by Drs Ashok Kosla from India and Ernst von Weizsacker of Germany and its Working Group on metals is chaired by Thomas Graedel, Professor of Industrial Ecology at Yale University.
Professor Graedel said: “One of the phenomena of our modern, industrial age is that increasingly metal stocks are “above ground” in structures such as buildings and ships and products from cell phones to personal computers.”
“For example around 240 kg of copper per person in the United States is now “above ground” and the global total could increase three to nine fold over the coming years given anticipated development patterns,” he said.
“Yet these above ground supplies of both common and specialty metals represent an extraordinary resource for sustainable development not only in terms of supplies but also the opportunity for reducing energy demand while curbing pollution, including rising greenhouse gas emissions,” he added.
