News
27th of February 2017
STRADE publishes policy brief on EU raw material import flows
STRADE's policy brief 02/2017 analyses the European import flows of metals in various processing states and the connections with specific environmental and socio-economic issues in resource-rich countries.
27th of February 2017
STRADE publishes policy brief on minerals and metals from non-EU countries
STRADE's policy brief 01/2017 examines the role and responsibility of European institutions to positively influence the environmental and social conditions of raw materials production in non-EU countries.
30th of December 2016
STRADE publishes policy brief on voluntary initiatives, principles and criteria on socio-economic sustainability in mining
STRADE's policy brief 09/2016 reviews socio-economic principles and criteria in voluntary and legally non-binding initiatives with particular relevance for the ore mining sector.
UNEP published the report "Recycling Rates of Metals"
3rd of June 2011 by Stefanie Degreif
The International Resource Panel of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched the new report “Recycling Rates of Metals” worked out by its Working Group on the Global Metal Flows. The results of the report were presented last week in London by lead author Thomas E. Graedel (Yale University) and on the occasion of the Green Week in Brussels by our colleague Matthias Buchert who is one of the eight authors. Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP’s Executive Director has opened the press conference in Brussels and has underlined the high relevance of the new study and the confirmation that global efforts to enhance recycling rates of metals should be improved in the next years.
The report provides an overview on the current knowledge of recycling rates for sixty metals.
According to this report recycling rates of metals are in many cases far lower than their potential. Out of 60 metals less than one third (aluminium, cobalt, chromium, copper, gold, iron, lead, manganese, niobium, nickel, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, silver, tin, titanium, and zinc) has an end-of-life-recycling rate (EOL-RR) above 50%. And more than the half of the metals (34 elements) has an EOL-RR under 1% (e.g. gallium, indium, and neodymium).
Many of these metals are crucial to green technologies such as magnets in electric vehicles or wind turbines or lighting systems.
You can find the full report and the summary booklet on the UNEP-webpage:
http://www.unep.org/resourcepanel/Publications/Recyclingratesofmetals/tabid/56073/Default.aspx
The Brussels presentation of Matthias Buchert is available for download here:
http://www.resourcefever.org/publications/presentations/UNEP_metals20110526-OeI-shortversion.pdf