Welcome to this special issue of Waste and Resource Management on materials security. High commodity prices, increasing demand for metals and minerals, and rising resource nationalism in producing countries have given rise to planning and action in consuming countries around these issues. This is exemplified in the raw materials initiative of the European Union (EC, 2008) although individual member countries within the EU, as well as the USA, South Korea and most notably, Japan, are all acting on these concerns. Neither is this issue limited to the developed world, with China’s concerns over its high import dependence on iron ore and energy minerals having led to well-publicised conflicts with some commercial organisations.
It is also not a new debate, having been visited by developed countries in the 1970s in the aftermath of the Gulf oil crisis and of the Limits to Growth report of the Club of Rome (Meadows et al., 1972). The former demonstrated the vulnerability of developed economies to import dependence of key materials, while the latter was interpreted as proposing a catastrophic gap between economic and population growth and the availability of resources to support it.
The context of the current debate on raw materials has shifted somewhat: for example there is an increasing separation between producer and consumer countries. Previously, consumer countries produced a higher proportion of their own raw material needs, but their higher grade deposits are becoming worked out or more difficult to access. In addition a long period of low metal prices and high availability to supply has led to assumptions in the developed world that required amounts of these materials will always be available.
These assumptions have been shown to be over-optimistic, for example through the recent well-publicised events concerning the supply of rare earths from China. Finally population and economic growth since the 1970s is creating a much greater absolute demand for metals and minerals. This leads to one of the key questions in materials security: is this concept a product of cyclically high prices and consequent temporary geopolitical advantage of producer nations; or has a lasting shift taken place to permanently secure high commodity prices and producer advantage?
Materials security or materials criticality research has largely focused on non-energy metals and minerals, with energy materials usually being treated as a separate field of study. It is generally accepted from prior research that absolute shortage of minerals or metals is unlikely to occur unless arising for commercial reasons such as their presence as by-products rather than being mined as the primary material. Phosphorus is a frequently discussed long-term issue due to its limited appearance as a mineral in just a few world regions. There is a continuing debate about the quantities of absolute resource that might be made available in the long term. The paper by Hilton and Dawson (2012) discusses how alternative management of the wastes and by-products from phosphorus fertiliser manufacture can lead to more efficient use as fertiliser, alternative construction materials, or even in the nuclear cycle, and the balance of this potential with environmental and health risks.
Usually criticality studies produce a group of raw materials that are deserving of especial attention, often including metals with low production volumes that are important to new and green technologies, such as platinum group metals, rare earths and minor metals such as gallium and tungsten. The methods that countries or industrial sectors should use to determine which raw materials are critical or insecure are critiqued by Lloyd et al. (2012) and Buijs et al. (2012). These methodologies are very important since the chosen list of raw materials may receive strategic investments from governments or industry in primary production, substitution and recycling infrastructure. Some of the shortcomings identified by Buijs et al. in existing criticality methodologies are expected to be addressed in future research, for example in the revision of the critical materials group that is being undertaken by the European Commission during 2012 and 2013. Both studies emphasise the importance of the industrial and political context and the purpose for which criticality criteria are developed.
The implications for the waste management sector are summarised by Kooroshy and Tukker (2012) in the opening briefing paper of this issue. In particular they note the appearance of many critical materials in waste electronic and electrical equipment and end-of-life vehicles but only in small quantities and low concentrations. Allied with low current recycling rates for these materials, their recovery is likely to remain challenging both technically and also in the formulation of appropriate policies. The second briefing paper by Gunn and Bloodworth (2012) emphasises the need for a clear understanding of terminology such as ‘reserves’ and illustrates how erroneous conclusions can result. The authors discuss the economics of by-product production, which is important in understanding many of the metals described as ‘critical’ by policy-makers due to their high importance yet high import dependence.
The issue is completed with two papers unrelated to the materials security theme. In the third briefing paper in this issue Mitchell (2012) presents a case study of Europe’s largest public sector waste procurement project, located around Greater Manchester, UK. The nature of the planning challenge is examined for the waste treatment processes involved, which include in-vessel composting, materials reclamation, and mechanical-biological treatment allied with anaerobic digestion, with energy from waste for residual waste.
In the final paper of this issue Fehr (2012) describes a long-term pilot scheme in a condominium in Brazil towards zero to landfill. The paper emphasises the particular role of source segregation of recyclates that drives collection and reverse logistics and proposes these long-term changes in behaviour and waste management approach as a model strategy for developing countries.
