Recycling of critical metals from end-of-life electronics

The North Rhine-Westphalia State Agency for Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection commissioned Öko-Institut to conduct a study on “Recycling critical raw materials from waste electronic equipment”. It comprises an inventory for critical metals in selected electronic products (flat screens, notebooks, smartphones, LEDs), current recycling situation and foreseeable developments in WEEE-recycling. Based on this analysis, recommendations to enhance critical resource recovery from WEEE are derived. The analysis addresses cobalt, gallium, germanium, gold, indium, PGMs, rare earths, silver and tantalum. Although data availability leaves uncertainties related to metal stocks of the German market, the orders of magnitude were sketched. In addition, an estimation of metal losses caused by imperfect collection, pre-processing and refining allow the prioritisation of improvement potentials. These can be tapped by higher collection rates, improved pre-processing and the development of refining processes to recover rare earths. In addition, policy and product design can also have a positive influence.