Reduce demand and recycle critical materials like lithium, say top engineers

A University of Sheffield professor has contributed to a new report calling for a national materials strategy that addresses the rising demand for critical materials.

A University of Sheffield professor has contributed to a new report calling for a national materials strategy that addresses the rising demand for critical materials.

Published by the National Engineering Policy Centre, led by the Royal Academy of Engineering, the report is urging the UK government to develop an integrated materials strategy to reduce demand, reuse and recycle critical materials to support the UK’s existing Net Zero Strategy and improve economic security.

Professor Joan Cordiner, Professor of Process Engineering at the University of Sheffield, is Chair of the National Engineering Policy Centre Working Group on Materials and Net Zero. On publishing the report, she said: “The way we extract and consume materials is unsustainable and we must address it urgently. Our report highlights the rising demand for critical materials, driven in part by their use in batteries, power systems and electronics. We are not the only country that will be competing for these finite minerals and we are calling on the new Government to develop a materials strategy that addresses demand and reuse of critical materials.”

“For example, if we reduced the size of the UK’s larger electric vehicle batteries by 30 per cent we could cut our lithium demand by 17 per cent and save 75 million tonnes of rock mined for lithium by 2040 – that’s the equivalent of 19 Wembley Stadiums full of rock.” 

Critical materials – as identified by the UK government – include lithium, used in batteries; and magnesium, used for producing steel alloys. The UK is economically and physically dependent on many materials that are mined around the world. Critical materials also include elements such as indium, cobalt, and niobium, and rare earth elements such as neodymium and praseodymium. These tend to be found in very low concentrations and mining them often involves extracting vast quantities of rock or water.

The report recommends maintaining a National Materials Data Hub to monitor the sustainability of materials consumed by and in use in the UK, and enable assessment of infrastructure plans for material security and sustainability. Government should also work internationally to improve traceability and measure the global impacts of our materials’ emissions, pollution and social harms, using tools such as digital passporting.

The authors propose a new target to halve the UK’s economy-wide material footprint to help us avoid overconsumption and support the drive to reach net zero carbon emissions. 

Much of the infrastructure and technologies currently being used to decarbonise the economy rely on critical materials. The report recommends investing in design to reduce demand, together with more recycling facilities for machinery like wind turbines and batteries to retrieve the valuable minerals at the end of their life. 

Government and industry should account for material needs when planning infrastructure system transformation, to avoid locking in dependencies on scarce or unsustainable resources

As currently designed, recovering critical materials from current products requires highly intricate processes, which are often prohibitively expensive, and a significant amount of electronic waste is disposed of to landfill, despite containing valuable materials.  

Working Group member Mark Enzer FREng said: “Globally, 62 million tonnes of e-waste are generated every year, and the UK produces the second highest amount of e-waste per capita. International e-Waste Day next week provides a sobering opportunity for us to reflect on the urgent need to engineer a greener future. Otherwise, the state of our environment and the supply of items like lithium-ion batteries looks bleak without more recycling and moving away from how we dispose of our old electronic devices.”

Recommendations for cutting the UK’s critical material footprint include:

The report, Critical materials: demand-side resource efficiency measures for sustainability and resilience, has been published by the National Engineering Policy Centre, led by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Read the report.