Urban mining crucial: more critical and strategic materials from electronics and electrical devices

Identified opportunities

Despite progress in this area, significant challenges remain in effectively recovering these materials. The Critical Raw Materials Act sets ambitious goals for the EU for SRMs, including meeting 25% of the EU’s annual demand from recycling. The Netherlands is still far from meeting these goals.

TNO highlights in a whitepaper the possibilities for recovery of CRMs and SRMs from waste electrical and electronic equipment (e-waste), using a case study of the Netherlands. For all critical materials, the translation to processing has been made. This waste stream contains many CRMs and SRMs, of which only a few are currently recovered.

We examined how recycling can contribute to meeting the demand within all six categories identified by the EU:large & small equipment, small IT and Telecommunications, screens and monitors, temperature exchange equipment, and lamps).

3 recommendations

The TNO whitepaper provides several recommendations:

1. Policymakers should create better incentives for the collection and recycling of e-waste.
2. More transparency and collaboration between stakeholders are needed to increase knowledge about product composition.
3. Companies and research institutions should be encouraged to develop and apply new technologies for the recovery of SRMs.

Improver collection and sorting

One of the biggest obstacles in the value chain is collection of e-waste . In the Netherlands, only 44% of e-waste was collected in 2020, while the target is 65%. Many end-of-life products remain unused or broken in households and businesses, leaving an untapped source of valuable materials.

To address this issue, more effective incentives for consumers and businesses to hand in their old devices are needed. This for processing and recovery of valuable materials.

Current policy mainly focuses on the mass of collected waste rather than specific materials like critical and strategic raw materials. As a result, smaller but still very relevant quantities of valuable materials are often lost in the recycling process.

For example, permanent magnet materials from electric motors in heavy washing machines are not recovered. Policies that promote the recovery of these materials and increase transparency in the reporting of recycled materials can improve this situation.

Promote transparency and collaboration in the value chain

The heterogeneous nature of electronic waste makes it difficult to determine the exact composition of products.

“The contents of the electrical products we use is a bit of a black box. With products changing frequently with rapid innovation cycles, the lack of product transparency from manufacturers makes it hard to develop viable recycling pathways for critical materials" thus says Kieran Campbell-Johnston, lead author of the TNO study.

Better collaboration between research organizations, manufacturers and producer responsibility organizations (PROs) is essential to increase knowledge about product composition.

Technological and economic limitations

Although technologies exist for the recovery of CRMs and SRMs, they are often not sufficiently developed or widely applied. The costs of manual disassembly and the energy required for recycling make it economically less attractive. There is a strong need for further development and implementation of more efficient and cost-effective technologies for recovering these materials.

Susanne van Berkum, Consultant Circular Electronics at TNO: “Currently, the costs of recycling are often higher than those of extracting virgin materials. As a result, there is only market for recycling of the most valuable metals, such as copper and gold. However, to recycle other CRMs as well, companies must be financially supported to invest in novel recycling technologies and extend their processes to expand the number of recovered CRMs.

Do you need advice on the possibilities for recovering critical and strategical materials from electronics and electrical equipment? Contact Wouter de Wolf.