Urban mining is not a solution for electric vehicle mineral demand

Fully Charged Show illustrates that the global electronic waste is an opportunity for EV minerals.

"We produce over $62,5 billion of electric waste each year."

Let me explain why urban mining is important but insignificant in terms of EV deployment.💡

Link to the Fully Charged Show post.

First of all, we do produce quite a staggering amount of electronic devices every year. 

Around 1400 million smart phones, 160 milloin tablets, 210 million laptops, and 800 million e-cigarettes. 2,6 billion in total.

All of them should be recycled at the end of their lifetime.

@AidanRGallagher offers a solution: "Circular economy. We should make sure that we’re getting our resources to build these devices from previous devices." 

So, how far towards the circular economy can we get if we recycled all the e-device battery minerals?

Aidan Gallagher's interview

Most of the batteries outside EVs are used for these four product categories.

We can estimate the battery demand of each category using a benchmark product, which is right on the money with the IEA estimate.

Last year around 27,4 GWh were used.

At the same time EV and mineral demand is growing multiple times faster. In the name of circularity & sustainability let's use an optimistic: IEA's new net zero scenario for EVs.

Here's the EV deployment and projected linear EV demand for the next seven years.


Assuming 1, 4, 6 and 7 year lifetime for e-cigarettes, smart phones, tablets and laptops respectively & 100% recovery rate (much lower in reality) the recycled material amount can barely keep up with the new e-device demand.

How can it possibly be a solution for other devices?

The short answer is of course that it can't.

Even if we were to use e-device battery waste for EV's, it can provide only 0,8% of our battery material need for EVs by 2030.

96,5% of the raw materials have to come from primary resources. That is mining and refining.

The reason behind this is simple as illustrated before with the immense difference in demand projections. 

29 GWh e-waste amount is enough for around 400 thousand EVs. Important but insignificant.

“One person's trash is another’s treasure” but the treasure is nowhere big enough to empower the EV deployment or the sustainable and circular economy.

Most of the building blocks for the circular economy must come from primary mineral resources.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Visa Siekkinen

15.10.2023

Twitter thread link: https://x.com/visaskn/status/1713536843117969850?s=20