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Hazra, Sumit and Li, Zushu (2022) Steel time to make a difference. Materials World, 30 (7/8). pp. 33-35.
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WRAP-Steel-time-to-make-a-difference-Hazra-2022.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0. Download (330Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://www.iom3.org/resource/circular-metals.html
Abstract
Metals are fundamental to modern life. They are used in all areas of society from transport, energy production, construction to packaging and the metals supply chain contributes £10.7bn to the UK economy. The high volumes of metals used in the UK and the nature of their manufacturing processes mean that they are responsible for large quantities of carbon dioxide emissions. The Stern review of 2006 quantified its severe consequences to human society and in response, the UK passed the Climate Change Act (2008), amended in 2019, to target net-zero emissions by 2050. Analyses by the EC and the Energy Transitions Commission, a think-tank, show that the UK can only achieve this ambition by fundamentally reducing its demand for carbon intensive virgin metals by increasing ‘material efficiency’ and ‘circularity’. This is because, unlike sectors such as transportation, metal production is difficult to electrify with renewable energy sources, making their emissions difficult to abate.
Circularity or the circular economy is a framework of three broad principles: eliminate waste, keep materials and resources in use and regenerate natural systems. For metal production, the first two principles increase material efficiency. Specifically, this can be achieved by reducing material usage, reusing, remanufacturing and recycling when it is not possible to reuse and remanufacture.
Apart from reducing, increasing circularity will require the development of techniques to identify the quality of end-of-life products. George Akerlof observed in his ground-breaking paper, ‘The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism’, that used products are characterised by variable quality and that this quality is difficult to quantify in a marketplace. This creates an ‘information asymmetry’ in the market where sellers know more than buyers about product quality. This information asymmetry favours the sale of poor-quality products (or lemons), resulting in low prices and market failure. Avoiding this failure will require efficient and cost-effective techniques that extract the critical information from end-of-life products that indicate its quality. For reuse, remanufacturing and recycling, this is a fundamental requirement because it allows the market to make accurate valuations, which in turn is the necessary condition for the growth of circular supply chains.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Alternative Title: | Circular Metals | ||||||||
| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences Q Science > Q Science (General) |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Engineering > WMG (Formerly the Warwick Manufacturing Group) | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Sustainability -- Great Britain, Sustainable development, Metals -- Recycling, Environmental economics | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Materials World | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 1 July 2022 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 30 | ||||||||
| Number: | 7/8 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 33-35 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Materials World. Hazra, Sumit and Li, Zushu (2022) Steel time to make a difference. Materials World, 30 (7/8). pp. 33-35. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Copyright Holders: | Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (UK) | ||||||||
| Description: | Accepted as 'The importance of information to the circular economy'. |
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| Date of first compliant deposit: | 5 September 2022 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 1 July 2023 | ||||||||
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