An EU closed loop waste management system for rare earths: tackling criticality with a disruptive circular economy policy

• Autor(a) principal: Azambuja, Guilherme António Ribeiro
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/21720
• topic: Rare earths; WEEE; Rare earths recycling; CRM; EU policies; Waste management system; Reciclagem terras raras; TR; MPC; Sistema de gestão de resíduos; Política industrial europeia

The EU has recently upped its efforts to ensure a stable access to raw materials and mostly finite ones, many of which are not explored domestically. The Raw Materials Initiative launched in 2008 opened the door to a European industrial policy agenda focused on sustainable access and management of raw materials. Shortly after, the EU began publishing its list of Critical Raw Materials (CRM) every 3 years. Among the most critical of materials are rare earths (REE), which are indispensable to the EU energy transition and a carbon neutral society. The EU challenge of ensuring both a stable access and a circular management of rare earths is an enduring conundrum. Despite the policy efforts to push for more circularity and recycling of the rare earths, the situation has not improved since 2011 - reliance on Chinese supply is about 100% and recycling has no expression for most rare earths. The focus of this project is to provide a policy contribution to tackling this conundrum. The rare earths situation in the EU is studied carefully by considering EU’s strategic interest, the demand from EU sectors and the state of global supply. Public policies targeted at CRM are critically assessed and its limitations are discussed. An alternative policy path is presented in which the EU would commit to co-creating a recycling system aimed at recovering rare earths from waste of electric and electronic equipment.