Recycling CRMs

Recycling Critical Raw Materials

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Recycling Critical Raw Materials can be quite challenging. The use of secondary critical raw materials is in many cases impossible (e.g. phosphor used in fertilisers, coking coal burned in steel production, etc.). In other cases, critical raw materials are used in alloys in very small quantities to give the material specific characteristics. For example, beryllium is used up to 2% in a copper-beryllium alloys to give it stiffness, a small percentage of niobium is used in steel production to enhance strength, a smart phone contains dozens of substances in small, often alloyed components, etc.). Recovering or recycling could therefore sometimes come at even greater economic and environmental costs, thus negating the benefits.

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