Reasons why our recycling within Europe could be very lucrative and important. Tim was definitely excited mentioning EU eyes were on Ionic Technologies.
https://www.breakingviews.com/considered-view/recycling-fail-exacerbates-eus-metals-conundrum/
Recycling fail exacerbates EU’s metals conundrum
7 Jul 2023
Mettalic Trap. Chinese export curbs on niche metals used in high-tech industries place Europe between the hammer and the anvil. The European Union already lacks the capacity to mine and process in abundance its own raw materials needs. But the bloc is also likely to miss targets in an area that would substantially ease the problem – recycling waste materials.
Despite pledging 10 billion euros to reuse resources, the 27-nation bloc is struggling to make progress. Between 2015 and 2021 EU states’ circularity rate, which measures the share of material recovered from waste and fed back into the economy, rose by a pitiful 0.4 percentage points to 11.7% of overall material use. That raises big questions about the EU’s ability to meet its goal of doubling that percentage by 2030, the European Court of Auditors said on July 3.
As political tensions between China and the West intensify, improving the bloc’s recycling capabilities has an increasingly important strategic value. China is the overwhelming market leader in processing and refining minerals that are key to the green transition, such as nickel, lithium and cobalt. It also dominates the processing of germanium and gallium, two metals strategic for microchips and fiber optics whose export Beijing said on Monday it plans to restrict from August.
Germanium, mainly recovered from refining zinc, and gallium, obtained from processing bauxite to make aluminum, are both by-products from the production of other metals, UK Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre director Paul Lusty says. Europe does not have the refining infrastructure that allows China to dominate the global production of these critical metals. That’s why improving the bloc’s existing capability to reuse strategic materials is so important.
Unfortunately, recovering gallium and germanium from used objects is tricky. The metals are often dispersed in small quantities and sometimes mixed with other components. Recycling material left over from product manufacturing is a better option. Around 30% of 2022 global germanium production was sourced from industrial scraps, the EU says, although some of that may be produced in China. Umicore, a $7 billion Belgian materials company specialising in sustainable technologies, already derives 50% of its supply needs from secondary sources.
True, U.N. data shows that in 2019 Europe recycled 42.5% of electronic waste, which often contains precious and critical materials, compared to a 17% proportion globally. But there is scope to do better. The bloc is hardly reusing any of the metals key for electric-car batteries, partly because few of these batteries have reached the end of their life cycle. If it upped its game, recycling could provide up to 77% of the region’s supply of EV car battery materials by 2050, a report commissioned by industry association Eurometaux says.
Securing strategic materials at the same time as de-risking from China is arguably the EU’s biggest challenge. Recycling to make its life easier is a no-brainer.
Context News
The European Union’s circularity rate, defined as the share of material derived from waste that is fed back into the economy, stood at just 11.7% in 2021, similar to where it stood a decade ago, Eurostat data shows.
The EU has earmarked 10 billion euros to improve its ability to reuse discarded materials, but it’s unlikely to meet its goal to double the circularity rate by 2030 from 2020 levels, a report by the European Court of Auditors shows.
(20min delay)