A new European project will explore the commercial potential for mining so-called critical raw materials (CRMs) from used small household electronics and appliances.
Critical Raw Materials that are included in the project include graphite, cobalt, antimony, tantalum, rare earths, silver, gold, and platinum group metals. The Critical Raw Material Recovery project, which is launched by the UK waste-reduction charity WRAP, aims to develop policy recommendations and proposals to the European Union, to develop an infrastructure for cost-effective recovery of the materials.
As part of the project, there will be experiments with new drop-off collection sites for e-scrap, for example at universities and businesses. Furthermore, new recycling techniques will be tested to improve the recovery rate of critical raw materials.
Read more about the project here.
