Challenges of Biohydrometallurgy in the Circular Economy

Abstract

The sustainable management of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is considered a challenge, given the fastest increasing stream of waste in the world. Natural resource exploitation is accelerating in the face of resource decline, while at the same time people are generating ever-growing fluxes of wastes and pollutants [1]. WEEE can be considered as a source of various metallic and nonmetallic components including critical or strategic materials for the development of new high technologies. Considering the ever-present possibility of depletion of non-renewable resources, the economic benefits of recovering valuable metals from the recycling of WEEE are potentially important in the coming decades. Metal ores stem from non-renewable resource stocks; and predictions as to how long metal world reserves will last depend mainly on economic growth, price trends and technological development [2,3]. The circular economy assumes that it is important to reuse consumer goods as well as efficiently and profitably extract valuable inputs from discarded materials such as electronic waste while mitigating environmental impacts over decades for those same wastes [4,5]. In developed and developing countries, the correlation between WEEE generation and its GDP is clear [6] as well as this correlation was also observed for South American countries [7]. Circular supply chains cannot circulate 100% of resources and hence new resource inputs from the natural environment will remain necessary. Moreover, a transition towards a circular economy requires innovative technologies for WEEE recovery and recycling practices to be sustainably managed.