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Losses and lifetimes of metals in the economy

Article dans une revue avec comité de lecture
Author
CHARPENTIER PONCELET, Alexandre
24493 Institut des Sciences Moléculaires [ISM]
HELBIG, Christoph
LOUBET, Philippe
24493 Institut des Sciences Moléculaires [ISM]
BEYLOT, Antoine
18404 Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières [BRGM]
MULLER, Stéphanie
18404 Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières [BRGM]
VILLENEUVE, Jacques
18404 Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières [BRGM]
ccLARATTE, Bertrand
1002421 Institut de Mécanique et d'Ingénierie [I2M]
1003434 Arts et Métiers Sciences et Technologies
THORENZ, Andrea
TUMA, Axel
SONNEMANN, Guido
24493 Institut des Sciences Moléculaires [ISM]

URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10985/22317
DOI
10.1038/s41893-022-00895-8
Date
2022-05-19
Journal
Nature Sustainability

Abstract

The consumption of most metals continues to rise following ever-increasing population growth, affluence and technological development. Sustainability considerations urge greater resource efficiency and retention of metals in the economy. We model the fate of a yearly cohort of 61 extracted metals over time and identify where losses are expected to occur through a life-cycle lens. We find that ferrous metals have the longest lifetimes, with 150 years on average, followed by precious, non-ferrous and specialty metals with 61, 50 and 12 years on average, respectively. Production losses are the largest for 15 of the studied metals whereas use losses are the largest for barium, mercury and strontium. Losses to waste management and recycling are the largest for 43 metals, suggesting the need to improve design for better sorting and recycling and to ensure longer-lasting products, in combination with improving waste-management practices. Compared with the United Nations Environmental Programme’s recycling statistics, our results show the importance of taking a life-cycle perspective to estimate losses of metals to develop effective circular economy strategies. We provide the dataset and model used in a machine-readable format to allow further research on metal cycles

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