Recycling Toward Rare Earth Security

Historically, recycling has proven to be an efficient way of securing materials availability for a range of metals. Recycling initiatives have flourished all the more when metals share the following features: little diversity of mining and exporting countries, political instability in these countries, high and increasing demand from the industry. One famous case of the above is cobalt, a non-ferrous metal used mostly in the preparation of magnetic, high-resistant alloys, as well as catalysts and batteries. Being relatively rare in the earth crust, and historically having half of its production originate in the politically instable area of Zaïre and Zambia, cobalt started being recycled as soon as the 1970s. The cobalt crisis of 1978, during which cobalt prices skyrocketed, fostered an even greater interest for both substitution and recycling. Twenty years later, cobalt had an EOL-RR (End-of-Life Recycling Rate) of 68 percent (UNEP, 2011).