Raw materials are essential for the EU economy but their availability is increasingly under pressure. In order to address this, the EU Raw Materials Initiative identified a list of critical raw materials at EU level, in close cooperation with Member States and stakeholders. A report was released in 2010 on ‘Critical raw materials for the EU: Report of the ad-hoc working group on defining critical raw materials’, which puts forward a concept of “criticality”, where the raw material is labelled critical when the risks of supply shortage and their impacts on the economy are higher than compared with most of the other raw materials.
The EU report considers that the 14 raw materials, including two defined groups of materials, are to be considered “critical” due to their high relative economic importance and high relative supply risk. These Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) are listed below in alphabetical order:
The six “Platinum Group Metals” (PGMs) are platinum, palladium, iridium, rhodium, ruthenium and osmium.
The “Rare Earth Metals” (REMs) were identified in a further report by the Oko Institute in 2011 ‘Recycling critical raw materials from waste electronic equipment’ which are listed below:
- yttrium (Y),
- neodymium (Nd),
- gadolinium (Gd),
- erbium (Er),
- lanthanum (La),
- promethium (Pm),
- terbium (Tb),
- thulium (Tm),
- cerium (Ce),
- samarium (Sm),
- dysprosium (Dy),
- ytterbium (Yb),
- praseodymium (Pr),
- europium (Eu),
- holmium (Ho),
- lutetium (Lu)
- scandium (Sc)
In addition to these, “precious metals” considered to be rare and/or of high economic value should be taken into account. These include gold, silver, rhenium . The metallic constituents of printed circuit boards (PCBs) in most electrical items are precious metals and varying amounts of other non-ferrous metals in particular Copper and tin. Although PCBs only represent a small proportion of the total mass of the WEEE waste stream, currently the major economic driving force for WEEE recycling comes from recovery of copper and precious metals from PCBs in which gold accounts for over 80% of the total intrinsic value.
Giraffe has carried out extensive research into the CRM content in Electrical and electronic equipment and the best means of recovery these materials at end of life
Giraffe can help companies identifying where CRMs are in their products and help them develop the best methodologies for their recovery.