Recycled Materials and Circular Economy
Metals are infinitely recyclable and have unique properties which can make them irreplaceable in many cases. By advancing a circular economy system, metals never become waste and instead are redesigned into new products.
The Circular Economy Advances Decarbonization
For more than a century, metals have been essential to constructing and modernizing critical infrastructure like bridges, highways, and buildings, and manufacturing everyday products like batteries, electronics, and automobiles.
Many of the low-carbon technologies of the future—wind, solar, and electric vehicles—are more metal-intensive than the technologies they are replacing. Achieving global carbon reduction targets through the implementation of these technologies will require efficient and reliable metals recovery from an evolving feedstock of end-of-life products.
Minerals used in clean energy technologies compared to other power generation sources1
(kg/MW)
