THE FUTURE OF E-WASTE FROM URBAN MINING TO SPACE MINING

Imagine a line of 40-tonne trucks circling the planet around the equator. Imagine them loaded with old PCs, appliances, cables and other electrical and electronic equipment. You have just seen the amount of WEEE produced in 2022 alone: 62 million tonnes of electronic waste which, according to estimates from the fourth Global E-waste Monitor of the United Nations, will reach 82 million in 2030.


THE MAD RUSH OF ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS (AND WASTE)

The “mad rush” to produce devices and equipment of various kinds goes hand in hand with the resulting increase in waste, but in 2022 only 22.3% of electronic waste was correctly collected and sent for recycling. And as the United Nations report unfortunately tells us, the more waste we produce, the lower the percentage of waste we will be able to recycle. Hence, in 2030 it will drop to 20% because, despite increasing production, not enough is being done to increase recycling facilities.

First and foremost, this means heavy environmental impacts linked to the non-treatment or incorrect treatment of WEEE, but it also means leaving 57 billion euros of natural resources contained in this equipment unused and “unextracted”. It is no coincidence that we speak of “urban mines”: waste collection centres and deposits that can be transformed into new deposits from which to extract raw materials. These are all the more valuable and necessary when it comes to critical raw materials, so called because their supply is anything but simple due to the environmental and health impacts they cause, their typically uneven distribution and the armed and commercial conflicts that they often contribute to generating. A good part of these (16 out of 34 identified by the European Commission) are considered “strategic” due to their central role in the so-called “twin” ecological and digital transition, and for their use in the aerospace and defence sectors.


THE EUROPEAN CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS ACT

If e-waste collection and recycling were to reach 60% by 2030, the benefits would outweigh the costs by almost 35 billion euro and even several cases of tension and conflict between states or within certain countries would no longer be justified.

Europe, following the United States, has included the issue of recovering raw materials from so-called “urban mining” in the Critical Raw Materials Act, a regulation in force from 3 May 2024 with the aim of “ensuring a safe and sustainable supply of critical raw materials”. European standards aim to reduce dependence on supplies by covering 10% of annual needs through extraction, 25% through recycling and 40% of processing on European soil by 2030. Furthermore, no more than 65% of EU’s annual needs of each strategic raw material at any relevant stage of processing should come from a single third country.

In short, circularity is an integral part of a strategy to at least partially bridge the gap with other countries – first and foremost China – which not only mine, transform and market the majority of critical raw materials, but have also equipped themselves before Europe and the West in general to obtain them through recycling. China has set an ambitious goal of recycling half of its electronic waste by 2025, when the country will have used 6 billion cell phones, and to require new products to contain at least 20% recycled material by the same time.




THE ITALIAN DECREE FORGETS ABOUT RECYCLING 

And what about Italy? Our country imports 99% of critical raw materials from abroad and, as far as the electrical and electronic equipment supply chain is concerned, there are still very few plants in the country capable of recovering material from WEEE. This is mainly due to the lack of “raw material”, since WEEE collection is still insufficient. According to the latest management report of the WEEE Coordination Centre, in 2023 treatment plants sent for recovery 510,708 tonnes of electronic waste, 4.6% less than the quantities declared in 2022, with the collection rate in Italy standing at 30.24% against an EU target of 65%.

Last August, the so-called “critical raw materials decree” came into force, aimed at implementing the provisions of the European Critical Raw Materials Act in our country. The new regulations, however, focus almost exclusively on a new mining season, while for recycling only one authorisation period is required for plants, which are defined as strategic and therefore set at a maximum of 10 months.


MINING IN SPACE: A HOPE OR PIPE-DREAM?

Meanwhile, a new possible frontier for the supply of critical raw materials is gaining ground in the debate among industry insiders. In the spring of 2023, a satellite the size of a microwave oven was launched into space with the aim of checking for the presence of metals useful for “twin transitions” on the surfaces of asteroids. We are therefore at the dawn of “space mining”, even if NASA has been keen to state that the mission does not aim to mine metals because the technology to do so is not yet well developed. The European Space Agency even links the future of space exploration precisely to the ability that humans will be able to develop in mining critical raw materials (critical at least on Earth) from the surface of celestial bodies.

In addition to the issue of the huge investments required, the debate on space mining is mainly diplomatic and regulatory in nature. In 1967, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs created the main regulatory framework for space, the Outer Space Treaty (OST), which was joined in 1984 by the Moon Agreement, Article 11 of which defines the natural resources in space as “common heritage of mankind” and therefore not subject to the ownership of a single state, organisation or individual. The Moon Agreement thus appears to ban space mining, but the treaty is not generally considered enforceable under international law, and as of April 2024, only 17 nations had ratified it. Russia and China believe that the OST prohibits resource extraction and ownership, while the United States and Luxembourg have enacted legislation allowing these activities and the matter is still open to debate.


A WEAPON OF MASS DISTRACTION? 

The hope is that space mining does not become yet another weapon of mass distraction that focuses all investments on itself with the aim of perpetuating the linear “mine-produce-throw-away” model. A path that would divert attention and funds from a solution that is already within reach in terms of technology and legislation, that of e-waste recycling. This must be accompanied by policies to reduce the amount of waste produced, including through ecodesign and the possibility of repairing and reusing these products before they become waste.

The “urban mining” option is a certain path for another reason too. If the trucks carrying the 62 million tonnes of electronic waste produced every year cover the equator today, in a few years they will end up covering the entire planet.


Written by Raffaele Lupoli, editor-in-chief of EconomiaCircolare.com