Achievement of sustainability in metal life cycles from mining of virgin ore to consumer and industrial devices to end-of-life products requires greatly increased recycling rates and improved processing of metals using conventional and green chemistry technologies.  Electronic and other high-tech products containing precious, toxic, and specialty metals usually have short lifetimes and low recycling rates.  Products containing these metals generally are incinerated, discarded as waste in landfills, or dismantled in informal recycling using crude and environmentally irresponsible procedures.  Low recycling rates of metals coupled with increasing demand for high-tech products containing them necessitate increased mining with attendant environmental, health, energy, water, and carbon-footprint consequences. Greater use of urban mining will be shown to be an important component of achieving metal sustainability.  A case for technical improvements, including use of molecular recognition, in selective metal separations technology, especially for metal recovery from dilute feed stocks will be presented. Finally, global consequences of continuing on the present path will be examined and discussed.

Challenges to achievement of sustainability in metal life cycles

248th National Meeting (2014)

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