Sustainable Raw Material supply: towards a more “domestic” approach

Mines have been (and still are) fundamental for the economic and social development of Countries: indeed, mining exploitation is aimed to meet the demand for natural resources to improve the life quality of population. Raw Materials (RM), including the Critical ones (CRM), are essential for the sustainable functioning of modern societies; they are used in several clean and low carbon technologies (batteries for electric vehicles, turbines for wind energy, solar panels, etc.), as well as employed in the electronic industry (capacitors, electronic devices, etc.). Furthermore, as for clean and low carbon technologies, the demand for CRM is dependent on which wind, solar, and battery technologies will become dominant in the marketplace. Indeed, the acceleration in deployment of the key low carbon technologies has real implications for the commodities market; thus, not only REE but also aluminum, copper, silver, iron, lead, and others all stand to potentially benefit from a strong shift to low carbon technologies. All literature examining material and metals implications for supplying clean technologies strongly agrees that building these technologies will result in considerably more material-intensive demand than would traditional fossil fuel mechanisms.

The availability of CRM/RM is increasingly under pressure, and the criticality of the processing infrastructure and the recovering of these elements from various resources, leads the EU to be dependent on their imports, often from non-EU countries, which have been always affected by: fluctuating policies of the market, potential conflicts in the areas interested by their exploitation, higher environmental impacts connected to their exploitation, processing and waste management. China is the biggest producer of the 30 CRM for the EU; other countries have dominant supplies of specific CRM, such as USA (Beryllium), Brazil (Niobium), Chile (Lithium), South Africa (Iridium, Platinum, Rhodium, Ruthenium), Kazakhstan (Phosphorous), Guinea (Bauxite), DRC (Cobalt).

There is still a high potential for RM/CRM available in Europe, but their exploration and extraction have faced a strong competition due to highly regulated environmental protection and different land uses. Several studies show that in many regions massive amounts of strategically important materials, such as metals, have been accumulated in landfills and extractive waste facilities. EU legislation aims to reduce the amount of wastes disposed in waste facilities and landfills and to foster the recovery and recycling of waste. The objective set by the measures of Circular Economy packages is not to allow any more landfills by 2050. Contemporary, EU policies intend to boost the domestic exploitation, which need to be faced in a sustainable way (also applying new financial instruments for companies, such as the “Sustainable Finance”). Thus, wastes (including extractive waste) have to be intended as resources and landfills (including extractive waste facilities) have to be considered as “raw material reserve” to be exploited. To face the challenges connected to sustainable RM/CRM supply, an interdisciplinary approach and a wider knowledge about waste characteristics, volumes, localization, suggested processing activities, main impacts on environment and human health are needed.