Brussels – EU-funded experts today delivered the most comprehensive assessment ever of Europe's 'urban mine' – materials stocks and waste streams containing a vast, an underutilized reservoir of metals and minerals essential for clean energy, digital technologies, and modern industry.
FutuRaM (Future Availability of Secondary Raw Materials) project researchers today debuted a comprehensive mapping of critical raw materials (CRMs) embedded in discarded products, industrial residues, and demolished infrastructure across the EU27+4 (EU, UK, Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway).
The unprecedented survey involved analysis of 42 critical elements contained in several waste streams, from electronic waste, vehicles and their batteries to wind turbines, slags and ashes and building construction and demolition debris.
It revealed that recovery systems could, by 2050, enable Europe to recover between 4.1 and 5.7 million tonnes of CRMs annually, with primary substitution potential ranging from up to 33% under business-as-usual conditions, up to 47% with improved recovery systems and 56% under a circular economy scenario, if the quality of secondary raw materials can substitute for primary.
This would reduce European reliance on imported materials and strengthen supply security for key technologies such as batteries, electric vehicles, and renewable solar and wind energy.
A key advance of the project is a comprehensive overview for multiple waste streams from items placed on the market to waste generation with a new recovery model that distinguishes between critical raw materials present in waste and those available as secondary raw materials after treatment, addressing a major limitation in previous assessments and allowing more policy-relevant estimates of supply potential.
All the project data are now available through the Urban Mine Platform (urbanmineplatform.eu), a digital tool that helps visualize the availability of CRMs across Europe's waste streams, analyzed using a common framework that tracks flows from products and components down to individual materials and chemical elements.
The FutuRaM (Future Availability of Secondary Raw Materials) report and the Urban Mine Platform offers a detailed guide for CRMs for the EU27+4 countries which are today largely supplied by China (e.g. rare earth metals, lithium and cobalt), the Democratic Republic of Congo (cobalt), Australia (lithium), South Africa (platinum), and Turkey (boron).
A waste landscape rich in strategic opportunity
The platform and final report brings together harmonized data on seven major waste streams:
- Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE)
- Waste batteries
- End-of-life vehicles
- Construction and demolition waste from buildings
- Slags and ashes from industrial processes
- Mining waste
- Dismantled wind turbines
It confirms that 5.2 million tonnes of CRMs embedded in products were placed on the market in 2022, compared to 2.1 million tonnes embedded in waste and 1.4 million tonnes recovered, highlighting both the scale of material flows and the gap between consumption and recovery.
By 2050, CRMs in products placed on the market could rise to between 8.4 and 12.2 million tonnes annually as waste generation reaches 5.2 to 6.4 million tonnes, and recovery could reach 4.7 to 5.7 million tonnes underscoring the growing strategic importance of recycling systems.
Many strategically important materials, including lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements, are largely lost during collection and/or waste processing today.
Five CRMs – including platinum, and rhodium – have recovery rates of over 80% thanks largely to well-established collection and processing routes.
Eight others, including aluminium, copper, palladium, and nickel fall in the 40–80% range, where collection and treatment infrastructure is in place but losses remain significant.
And for 22 CRMs, recovery yields less than one tonne per year across the entire EU27+4 (2022 data) , with most rare earth elements in this category.
According to the report, with the right legislative and industrial choices made now, within 24 years some 17 CRMs, including cobalt, lithium, and rare earth metals such as dysprosium and neodymium, could achieve recovery rates above 80%.
