Posted on 05/26/2010 12:48:24 AM PDT by neverdem
Supplies of speciality metals like lithium, neodymium and indium could become restricted unless recycling rates improve. That's the message from the first two of six reports prepared to assess metal supply sustainability for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
'Scientists should anticipate the possibility that they may not have the whole periodic table to work with in future,' says Thomas Graedel, who led the Global Metal Flows Working Group that compiled the studies.
The report series won't deliver overall supply and demand projections until nearer to the 2012 Rio Earth Summit. Nevertheless Graedel, who is also director of Yale University's Center for Industrial Ecology in the US, thinks recycling will be pivotal if metal supplies are shown to be limited. 'Except for the major base metals and a couple of the most valuable metals, rates of recycling for almost all metals in the periodic table are low,' he notes. 'That means that they will be used one time and discarded, and that's a non-sustainable approach.'
One of the key obstacles to determining metal availability is that only around a third of metals have any estimates for quantities already extracted and in use. Of these, only five have been robustly quantified
© UNEP
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Graedel recommends redesigning products as an interim option for tackling these challenges. Mobile phones and computers can use as many as forty elements in milligram to gram amounts, he explains. 'We use a lot of material in highly complex structures,' he says. 'We are making it difficult for recycling to deal with, and product designers and materials scientists are not giving this any thought as they roll their designs out.'
The UNEP identifies indium as an example where demand is provisionally predicted to grow strongly, with the 1,200 tonnes needed in 2010 increasing to 2,600 tonnes by 2020. Used in producing light emitting diodes and transparent electrodes for flat screen displays, the UNEP says that under one per cent of indium demand is currently recycled. Claire Mikolajczak, director of metals and chemicals at materials supplier Indium Corporation, concedes that flat screens aren't being recycled, but argues that 65 per cent of indium supply currently comes from recycling 'spent' indium material used in manufacturing. 'This recycling ratio will stay constant or improve, so virgin production will need to be increased, but not by such high numbers,' she says.
Interesting
This whole “sustainable development” movement is nothing but population control, in more than one meaning of the phrase. They want to reduce birth rates in order to make the population more controlABLE.
This is just another facet of that movement.
And, like you said, they will attempt to ban mining in order to restrict and control us more.
Lot’s of metal in UN buildings.
I’ve read extensive astrometric surveys that show that the moon is replete with Helium 3, but, alas, Bamster has decided that it’s not in our best interest to be in space anymore.
This is in response to the addendum of the article. Helium 3 is easily captured, stored, and returned to the Earth with the proper surveying and mining of the moon.
Why we’ve not returned since Apollo is beyond me!
Asteroids are chock full of Platinum, Palladium and other rare metals ore. Moon has lots of Titanium and Aluminum ore too.
I hear a distant moon called Pandora has a lot of Unobtainium too. ;)
Well... anything not recycled is being put in landfills, thereby collecting all these various elements in one place. Recycling is good, but figuring out how to recover materials from landfills would yield eventually near 100% recycling. It can’t be much harder than strip mining. :-)
Dangerous lung worms found in people who eat raw crayfish
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Who's Afraid of Synthetic Biology? Don't let fears about frankenmicrobes halt promising research.
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mining rights to landfills?
this is becoming like the world of “Cherry 2000”
Who can forget November, 2008, when morons were finally quantified?
Leave it to the “experts” at the UN to not have enough data to make an informed decision and still make a decision.
Amazing and that’s not even mentioning the history or natural resources - they never run out!
Anything that is ‘scarce’ begs ‘control’. Convenient. No solution unless they take it and divvy it up among ‘friends’.
The same ol’ template.
in the UN world the desert has a shortage of sand.
Aye, Cap’n.
Supplies of speciality metals like lithium, neodymium and indium could become restricted unless recycling rates improve.
Fortunately, the U.S. has one of the worlds largest and richest Rare Earth deposits at Molycorp Minerals facility in Mountain Pass, California. At Mountain Pass we are producing certain Green Elements and plans are in place to bring the facility back into full production following an extensive modernization and expansion project. With appropriate federal assistance for research, development and capital costs, Molycorp Minerals is prepared to move forward to reestablish domestic manufacturing capacity on an expedited basis.
Thanks for the ping/post; thread. UNaccountable bureaucrats scheming new BS to justify their existence. Eliminate all UNaccountable collectives.
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