To build all the solar panels, wind turbines, batteries for electric vehicles and other technologies needed to fight climate change, we’re going to need many more metals. The extraction of those metals from the Earth creates damage and pollution that threatens ecosystems and communities. But there is another potential source of the copper, nickel, aluminum and rare earth minerals needed to stabilize the climate: the mountain of electronic waste humanity throws away every year.
Exactly how much of each clean energy metal is in the laptops, printers and smart fridges the world is throwing away? Until recently, no one really knew. Data on more obscure metals such as neodymium and palladium, which play small but critical roles in established and emerging green energy technologies, have been particularly difficult to obtain.
Now the United Nations has taken a first step towards filling these data gaps with the latest installment of its periodic report on e-waste around the world. Released last month, the new Global e-waste monitor shows the staggering scale of the e-waste crisis, which reached a new record in 2022 when the world threw away 62 million metric tons of electronics. And for the first time, the report includes a detailed breakdown of the metals found in our electronic waste, and how often they are recycled.
“There are very few reports on the recovery of metals [from e-waste] worldwide,” lead report author Kees Baldé told Grist. “We felt it was our duty to get more facts on the table.”
One of those facts is that some staggering amounts of energy transition metals end up in the trash.
Two of the most recyclable metals that are abundant in e-waste are aluminum and copper. Both are supposed to play essential roles in the energy transition: Copper wiring is common in a range of low- and zero-carbon technologies, from wind turbines to the power transmission lines that carry renewable energy. Aluminum is also used in some power lines, and as a lightweight structural support metal in electric vehicles, solar panels, and more. Yet only 60 percent of the estimated 4 million metric tons of aluminum and 2 million metric tons of copper present in e-waste in 2022 has been recycled. Millions of tons more ended up in landfills around the world.
The world could have used those scrap metals. In 2022, the climate technology sector’s copper demand stood at nearly 6 million metric tons, according to the International Energy Agency, or IEA. In a scenario where the world aggressively cuts emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, buyer demand for low-carbon technology could almost triple by 2030.
In the meantime, demand for aluminum is expected to grow to 80 percent by 2050 due to the pressure of the energy transition. Create with virgin aluminum production more than 10 times more carbon emissions than average aluminum recycling, increased recycling is a key strategy to curb aluminum’s carbon footprint as demand for the metal increases.
For other energy transition metals, recycling rates are much lower. Take the rare-earth element neodymium, which is used in the permanent magnets found in everything from iPhone speakers to electric vehicle motors to foreign cars. wind turbine generators. Globally, Baldé and his colleagues estimated that there were 7,248 metric tons of neodymium locked up in e-waste in 2022—about three-quarters of the 9,768 metric tons of neodymium needed by the wind and EV sectors that year, according to the IEA. Yet less than 1 percent of all rare earths are recycled in e-waste due to the immaturity of the underlying recycling technologiesas well as the cost and logistical challenges of the collection of rare earth rich components from technology.
“It’s a lot of effort to collect and separate rare-earth magnets for recycling,” Baldé said. Despite the EV and wind energy sectors’ rapidly growing rare-earth needs“there is no pressure from the market or lawmakers to restore them.”
The metals found in e-waste are not necessarily useful for every climate technology application, even when recycled. Take nickel. The lithium-ion batteries inside electric vehicles eat up huge amounts of the stuff — more than 300,000 metric tons in 2022. The amount of nickel needed for EVs could increase tenfold by 2050, according to the IEA. But while the world’s e-waste contained more than half a million metric tons of nickel in 2022, most of it was inside alloys like stainless steel. Rather than being separated, that nickel is “recycled into other steel products,” said Kwasi Ampofo, the lead metals and mining analyst at energy consultancy BloombergNEF. From that recycled steel can end up in wind turbines and other zero emission technologies. But that won’t directly help meet the much larger nickel demands of the EV battery market.
In other cases, e-waste may represent a significant supply of a specialized energy transition metal. Despite being present in small amounts, certain platinum group metals – found on printed circuit boards and inside medical equipment – are already being recycled at high rates due to their value. Some of these metals, such as palladium, is used in the production of catalysts for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, said Jeremy Mehta, technology manager at the Energy Department’s Office of Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies. “Recovery of palladium from e-waste can help meet the growing demand for these metals in fuel cell technologies and clean hydrogen production, supporting the clean energy transition,” said Mehta.
For the energy transition to take full advantage of the metals found in e-waste, better recycling policies are needed. This may include policies requiring manufacturers to design their products with disassembly and recycling in mind. Josh Blaisdell, who runs the Minnesota-based metal recycling company Enviro-Chem Inc., says that when a metal like copper isn’t recycled, it’s usually because it’s in a smartphone or other small consumer device that isn’t easy to disassemble.
In addition to design-for-recycling standards, Baldé believes metal recycling requirements are needed to push recyclers to recover some of the non-precious metals found in small amounts in e-waste, such as neodymium. To that end, in March, the European Council approved a new regulation which set a goal that by 2030, 25 percent of “critical raw materials”, including rare earth minerals, consumed in the European Union will come from recycled sources. While not a legally binding target, Baldé says it could “create the legislative push” toward metal recycling requirements.
Harvesting more of the metals within e-waste will be challenging, but there are many reasons to do so, Mehta told Grist. That’s why the Department of Energy, or DOE, last month a e-waste recycling price which will award up to $4 million to competitors with ideas that can “significantly increase the production and use of critical materials recovered from electronic scrap.”
“[W]e need to increase our domestic supply of critical materials to combat climate change, respond to emerging challenges and opportunities, and strengthen our energy independence,” said DOE’s Mehta. “Recycling e-scrap domestically is an important opportunity to reduce our reliance on unfinished materials in a way that is less energy-intensive, more cost-effective and safer.”
