TELF AG examines the potential contained in the recycling of critical raw materials
Individual awareness
One of the fundamental objectives of the global ecological transition, in addition to promoting progressive decarbonization, consists of increasing individual awareness in certain specific areas, such as respect for the environment, recycling, the role of clean energy in improving people’s lives, and safeguarding natural ecosystems, and many more. In addition to the direct, immediate, and even tangible objectives, there are, therefore, also others of a more immaterial nature, i.e., all those linked to the substantial modification of people’s consciences in order to make them more aware of the spaces in which they live and of the overall quality of one’s life, also closely linked to the healthiness of urban and natural contexts.
Part of this global awareness towards sustainability, and all the issues connected to it, will certainly have to concern the issue of waste of strategic raw resources, which is still talked about too little today. Not many are aware of the fact that the fate of the ecological transition depends to a large extent on a handful of strategic raw materials, also included by the European Commission in a special list of materials capable of influencing global development, and even fewer people aware of the fact that every day, while they throw any object in the garbage, they are actually fueling the waste of raw resources that are extremely useful for the sustainable future of the planet.
According to research conducted by the UN Training and research institute, the equivalent of 10 billion dollars of critical raw resources would be wasted every year, a truly astronomical figure that could even rise. These critical raw materials are, in fact, found in electrical cables, toys, razors, or headphones that we are used to throwing away every day, without knowing that all these objects contain not only silver and gold but also some of the raw materials that will play a role even more decisive in the future, like copper and lithium. The debate on the recovery of critical raw materials from waste has not yet reached the depth it deserves, and even today, in many nations of the world (practically all), we are witnessing high rates of waste, which could also negatively impact the successful completion of the ecological transition global. In Europe alone, 55% of electronic waste is recycled, but other parts of the world boast much lower percentages.
This situation, moreover, is part of an international framework marked by increasingly widespread fears regarding the possibility that stocks of certain materials may not be sufficient to cover the foreseeable increase in demand, with all that this entails for some specific materials. Industrial production – such as that of electric vehicles, heavily dependent on lithium for the manufacture of its batteries – and above all for the rapid achievement of the sustainable objectives set for 2030, the deadline for which seems ever closer. In an economic and geostrategic framework characterized by great uncertainty and by a growing fear on the part of many governments of not being able to prove capable of proceeding quickly towards decarbonization, the unexpected help provided by raw materials obtained from waste could solve a large number of problems, particularly in the long term.
