One of the reasons that circular economy is integral to our future. Many of the elements may be depleted within five to fifty years which will risk many aspects including energy transition. current recycling levels across a number of elements of the periodic table and suggests that the pressure on finite resources is likely to remain high as we are unable to keep up the high quality of the existing stock of materials in use due to recycling leakage #energytransition #future #circulareconomy #recycling #sustainability #energy #cleanenergy #environment
Omar AL-Ajaji you are one of my most appreciated mentors in Sustainability. But this topic will deserve more attention. Please don't get me wrong, I am a true proponent of the circular economy. However, let me go deeper into this article. Recycling and the discovery of new mineral bodies are functions of scarcity. Some minerals, like Prof. Clark points out in the first table, have huge resources (eg Mg, and here some attention to the technicalities around the reserve definition) or already have high recycling rates (eg Al). Maybe I'm confused by the graph. But what I've been following in recent years, with a few exceptions, the problem is more about security of supply (the distribution of this resources among nations) and the environmental footprint of new explorations than availability. Source: (Future Global Mineral Resources, Arndt et al., 2017).
As long as politicians don’t correct market distortions such as keeping cost of virgin plastic artificially low but post consumer recycled plastics are kept at high costs the incentive for manufacturers is low to make tye switch . Those who make it out of a string conviction and commitment to future genereations, where are the tax breaks for those sustainability pioneers? EV Vehicles are subsidized causing increase in demand and even higher uptake of rare earths needed for their batteries but the real green and sustainable solution Hydrogene is neglected when it comes to R&D investment and support from politics. The most promising technology is Photocatlics used for green hydrogene generation which could power everything when converted back into electricity without CO2 as byproduct !
Anyone who gets an opportunity should visit this Swiss waste incineration plant. District energy, greenhouses use waste heat and metal reclamation. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/how-the-swiss-extract-gold-from-rubbish/48126584
Nice to see the recycling rate was added to the reserve picture. a good source of information on the topic is the EU website on critical raw materials https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/raw-materials/areas-specific-interest/critical-raw-materials_en
Omar AL-Ajaji pictures paint a thousand words. We at Uplift360 focus on advanced material circularity in defence, one of the largest consumers of many of the elements listed. We are on a mission to disrupt this sector. Reachout if you wish to know more
Yep, our grandkids will have to dig through our garbage piles (landfills) to find the resources they need. So embarrassing and sad.
In rates of recycling Al it does not appear this is unforgivable because it is infinitely recyclable since it began to be manufactured in 1889 we have already produced 1 billion tons and 3/4 of these are still in use.
A new way of looking at need to reduce, reuse, recycle goods. It shows how lackadaisical our current way of thinking material use is!
Cost of recycling needs to be included in the purchase price of products to reflect total cost!
President and Founder, Nanoscale Powders LLC
10moThis is the gift that keeps on giving. Reserves of elements are a technical measure and not a real representation of what's in the ground. A major limitation on (properly defined) reserves is that it costs money to demonstrate a reserve of a mineral, so mining companies generally only demonstrate ("prove" in technical parlance) reserves as they move along. It's blatantly obvious that the amount of any element on the planet is finite. It's equally wrong to suggest that current mineral resources or reserves are rapidly approaching a hard limit. Anyone who doesn't buy this, go read "The Limits To growth" from the Club of Rome, and read about the Simon-Ehrlich bet. At some point we will inevitably exhaust resoources. But it won't be in our lifetimes. Yes, we should recycle, but not because of resource scarcity.