LIFE

LIFE ENVIRONMENT |
LIFE and the circular economy
tantalum, rare earths and silver, gold and platinum
group metals from display, consumer electronics,
ICT and small household appliances.
“Our research has shown that in the UK alone, we
dispose of around 1.4 million tonnes of electrical
and electronic products per year, and nearly 40%
of this is landfilled,” says Marcus Gover, Director
of coordinating beneficiary WRAP. “Yet these products
contain critical raw materials such as gold
and platinum, which are essential components of
many household technology products and appliances.
Economically and environmentally, it makes
no sense to be burying them.”
“The project will allow us to assess whether we can
get more value from the WEEE that is collected and
treated across Europe, and explore further opportunities
for improving the collection of end-of-life
products. These trials could have major benefits
for producers and the circular economy, as well as
for the environment and society as a whole,” says
Scott Butler of project partner the European Recycling
Platform (ERP).
“The key barrier to achieving closed loop recovery
of critical raw materials is the ability to recover the
CRMs in large enough quantities from products at
a cost effective rate to make them attractive to the
user,” explains Lucy Cooper, WRAP’s manufacturing
product manager. “As the amounts in individual
WEEE items are often small, significant quantities
Photo: LIFE14 ENV/UK/000344
Gold nuggets recovered from WEEE
are lost in the traditional WEEE treatment process.
Our project will look at how collections can impact
on amounts of CRM available for recovery and the
impact this has on recovery rates. The recovery trials
will look at the opportunities to increase recovery,
therefore making more CRMs available from
the recycling process,” she explains.
The project expects to collect and reprocess 100
tonnes of product from 10 collection trials (in UK,
Germany, Italy and Turkey). It will use the results
of these trials to develop a European-wide model
of the flow of WEEE through the recovery system,
a suite of possible nation-specific policy intervention
routes and EU infrastructure development
recommendations.
CRMRecovery is working to increase the recovery rates of critical raw materials by improving management of WEEE
Photo: LIFE14 ENV/UK/000344
84