The UK needs a whole value chain approach to accelerating circular economy capabilities from responsible sourcing to recycling and remanufacturing and developing other Circular Economy initiatives at industrial scale according to newly published research on Technology Metals led by the University of Exeter. 

The UKRI Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centre for Technology Metals – Met4Tech – project has published two landmark ‘roadmaps’ with key actions to enable a circular economy in technology metals by 2050. 

The project is a collaboration between the University of Exeter, University of Birmingham, University of Leicester, the University of Manchester, Aston University and the British Geological Survey, and has produced circular economy roadmaps for both Rare Earth Elements (REEs) in permanent magnets and Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). 

Met4Tech, was one of five centres (chemicals, textiles, minerals, metals, technology metals) and a coordinating CE-Hub funded through the £30 million, five-year, NICER programme – the UK’s largest circular economy research endeavour from Defra and UKRI. 

The roadmaps look at what the circular economy should be in bringing more technology metals into circulation, to build materials such as electric vehicles and wind turbines needed for a net zero energy transition. 

Principal Investigator Professor Frances Wall of Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter, said a completely new circular economy is needed for technology metals from geological exploration through to recycling. 

“We want to be able to reduce the carbon footprint and get much cleverer at keeping materials both for environmental reasons and for straightforward security of supply reasons. And for that, we really need a new circular economy. And when we say circular economy, we mean all the way from geological exploration, right at the very beginning, through all the phases of manufacturing, use, reuse and finally, catching things in the loop of last resort, in recycling.”  

The roadmaps set out actions and strategy needed to move from the current state to the target state and steps needed along the route and outline measurable targets. 

Among the key findings in the REE roadmap are: 

• Optimise responsible sourcing to encourage decarbonisation and improve ESG-benefits in the provision of both primary and secondary REE raw materials. 

• Optimise tracking of UK-based feedstocks and end-of use opportunities  

• Accelerate the build-up of national recycling capabilities. 

• Accelerate development of other nascent CE-initiatives at industrial scale. 

• De-risk future dependencies via strengthening international partnerships 

• Invest into research and development to improve CE-inspired levers across all REE value chain segments. 

Speaking about the REE roadmap, Professor Markus Zils of the University of Exeter’s Business School and Co-Lead on theme area 1 of the project, said rare earth materials are embedded in so many items that power the economy. 

“Rare earths are the magical dust, very small quantities, embedded in many complicated structures in vehicles, wind turbines, computer disks. They give an essential service, but they are embedded in components, subcomponents, and then into the product. So, it is very important to think through, how do you get the magical dust back and keep it is circulation after its first use?”   

Key insights from the LIBs roadmap include: 

• Recycling – It is not just the percentage of material that is recycled that is important but maintaining the highest value and resource efficiency using actions such as disassembly, re-use and remanufacturing of components where possible and also short loop recycling to produce compounds rather than going right back to individual elements.  

• Passport-style information on what LIBs contain is essential to facilitate all recycling and also key is good software and analysis to determine the best future for each LIB before it is recycled and send it to second life storage or the most appropriate recycling process. 

• CE interventions to use less material in the first place, to make more efficient use of materials, and to maintain the materials at their highest value are important, but harder to implement than recycling and thus less likely to reduce materials demand in the short term but are important areas for research and development. 

Dr Jyoti Ahuja of the University of Birmingham Law School and project researcher, speaking on the LIBs roadmap, said there is a need to make people buy in to electrification of transport and recycling before putting in place policies and phasing out older vehicles. 

Speaking about the roadmap process, Professor Robert Lee of University of Birmingham a Co-lead of Policy & Governance on the project, said one of the most important things was to raise awareness of the value of materials and some transparent information as to where it has come from and what is within products, and some rethinking on the social and environmental costs of primary material extraction. 

“We committed to doing road mapping as part of our grant proposal. It seemed a stretch, to try and roadmap all the critical materials that we were interested in. And therefore, we ended up road mapping two, product lines – lithium-ion batteries and rare earth magnets. These are great subjects to look at from a road mapping point of view, because, although we have made some start in the UK, there’s still an awful lot of infrastructure missing.” 

The roadmaps are available here Met4Tech