Recommendations Towards Improving Recovery

The study offers recommendations on how recycling could be increased worldwide. These suggestions include:

Encouraging product design that makes disassembly and material separation easier

Improving waste management and recycling infrastructure for complex end-of-life products in developing countries and emerging economies

In industrialized nations, addressing the fact that many metal-containing products are ‘hibernating’ in places likes drawers and closets and others, such as mobile phones, are all too often ending up in dustbins

Also recommended is the ongoing improvement of recycling technologies and collection systems to keep pace with “ever more complex products created with an increasingly diverse range of metals and alloys.”

Recycling Rates

Of the 60 elements studied, only 18 had greater than 50 percent recovery, with three items in the 25-50 percent recovery, three elements in the 10-25 percent category, two elements at 1-10 percent, 34 elements less than 1 percent.

Top Ten Metals Recovered

Lead (main use: batteries)

Gold (main uses: jewelry, electronics)

Silver (main uses: electronics, industrial applications (catalysts, batteries, glass/mirrors), jewelry);

Aluminum (main uses: in construction and transportation)

Tin (main uses: cans and solder)

Copper (main uses: conducting electricity and heat)

Chromium (main use: stainless steels)

Nickel (main uses: stainless steels and superalloys)

Niobium (main uses: high strength / low alloy steels and superalloys)

Manganese (main use: steel)