RICS Calls on U.K. Government to Focus on Rare Earth Metal Recycling

According to a report by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) submitted to the U.K. Government’s Science and Technology Committee, unless quick action is taken to increase the recycling of rare earth metals (REM), the government’s plan to achieve 15 percent renewable energy by 2020 will be unattainable.

In its submission, RICS notes that the 17 REMs are fundamental components in current renewable energy technologies - from solar panels, wind farms and hydroelectric turbines to possible energy conservation systems and nuclear applications. However, with the Chinese government controlling around 97 percent of REM production and growing global shortages, a recycling program is badly needed to protect the future of renewable energy production.

The growing shortage of REMs could very soon have a considerable impact on the future of renewable energy. RICS says that many current green technologies are wholly reliant on these elements. A policy similar to the EU’s WEEE Directive on electronic equipment recovery is urgently needed, as failure to act could mean that future green energy projects become economically unfeasible.

RICS contends that the U.K. does not have a secure domestic source of these critical materials. For this very reason, RICS’ report says should be investigating how to recover what has already been harvested and is lying unused or being discarded as waste. These metals are extremely difficult to isolate and mine, yet we are allowing them to be disposed of after just one use.

RICS notes that REMs are found in obsolete electronics. To extract more of the metals, RICS is calling for the U.K. to develop a comprehensive recycling program to meet the growing demand for the metals.

The organization claims that no active commercial recycling program currently exists in the U.K. However, a closed-loop production process involving collecting unused electronic equipment and reusing the elements is both economically and practically viable.