CHALLENGES IN ACHIEVING SUSTAINABILITY OF CRITICAL METALS IN WASTE ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT

摘要

The production and consumption of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) has been growing exponentially over the past decades. New developments and technological innovation make EEE more functional by using an increasing number of metals, particularly the critical metals with specialized properties. As millions of people in emerging economies engage in a modern lifestyle, the demand for critical metals is soaring. However, some critical metals, in scarcity for simple deficiency in the Earth’s crust or geopolitical constraints, can only be found in a few regions. Concerns focus on the future supply or sustainability of metals such as indium, lithium, cobalt, rare-earth elements, precious metals (gold, silver and platinum), all of which are crucial to EEE components, such as liquid crystal displays (LCD), batteries, fluorescent lights, hard disks and printed circuit boards (PCBs). Achievement of critical metals sustainability requires great recycling rates of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and advanced processing technologies. In this paper, the data on WEEE generation worldwide and the demand of critical metals in WEEE are reviewed, aiming to illustrate how the recycling of WEEE can potentially contribute to the increased material and resource efficiency of critical metals. Issues to be addressed and perspectives on the future supply and sustainability of critical metals are also presented and discussed.