Recycling, and circular economy practices play an important role in achieving global net-zero targets, serving as an accessible and easily comprehensible strategy to reduce resource consumption, minimise waste, and work towards mitigating environmental impacts. However, when considered with a life cycle assessment (LCA) lens, recycling may not be the silver bullet that some consider it to be.

There is work to be done in developing process efficiency to levels that render the pursuit universally beneficial for all sectors, and environmental aspects of particular processes need to be considered before launching into a closed-loop world. But first, let’s look at the positives of recycling!

3 Benefits of Recycling

1. Resource Conservation

Recycling helps conserve finite natural resources by reducing the need for raw material extraction. For example, in the production of batteries for electric vehicles, recycling materials like lithium, cobalt, and nickel from spent batteries can significantly diminish the reliance on new mining operations, which themselves have significant environmental burdens that vary depending on a host of inherent factors like ore body, processing technique and energy consumption. Recycling can help preserve the Earth's future natural resources, but also reduce some of the environmental and social impacts associated with mining and mineral processing.

2. Waste Reduction and Circular Economy

A circular economy, where products and materials are reused, refurbished, remanufactured, and recycled is a key approach to achieving net-zero targets. Recycling prevents valuable materials from ending up in landfills where they would otherwise decompose and contribute to long-term environmental impacts, reducing the overall waste generated by society. It transforms the traditional linear "take, make, dispose" model into a circular one, promoting sustainability by extending the lifespan of materials and products. A circular materials economy is crucial for achieving sustainability goals. Recycling facilitates the creation of closed-loop systems where materials are kept in circulation for as long as possible. This not only minimises the environmental impact of waste but also fosters beneficial socio-economic opportunities by creating jobs in recycling and remanufacturing industries.

3. Potential Emission Reduction

The production of goods from raw materials often involves energy-intensive processes that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts like acidification, eutrophication, water scarcity and particulate emissions. By recycling materials, industries have an opportunity to substitute the energy required for extraction, processing, and manufacturing with that required for the recycling process. This reduction in energy use translates to lower carbon emissions, aligning with global efforts to achieve net-zero targets. For instance, recycling aluminum requires significantly less energy compared to extracting it from bauxite ore, resulting in substantial emission savings. However, this is not unanimous for all substances and products, and recycling can even be more energy intensive than primary processing for particularly difficult materials. More on this later!

Life Cycle Perspective

It is important to note that generally, all recycling processes still require significant amounts of energy and materials to successfully recover secondary resources, and are not exempt themselves from contributing to environmental impacts. LCA is a robust and globally-recognised method for quantifying environmental impacts used prominently in many sectors to get to grips with sustainability, and under this approach, recycling unfortunately does not get a “free pass” out of direct and embodied emissions due to its ability to generate secondary material. It is thus important to recognise the repercussions recycling has on two fronts simultaneously for the true picture - resource conservation and environmental impact.

The benefits of recycling in a resource framework are clear - reducing waste and also the need for primary extraction, allowing avoidance of those portions of a product’s footprint. However, by replacing primary production with secondary material generation, you also replace the upstream impact with the impact of the recycling process, using a variety of (often complex) methodologies in LCA. Thus, if your recycling process is very underdeveloped, has low yield and requires a huge amount of energy to be successful, despite generating resource streams, you could actually be adding environmental impacts to your product’s performance by employing it! On the contrary, if your recycling process is optimised, energy- and resource-efficient, and produces a voluminous secondary material stream, your product will receive a “credit” towards its final environmental impact, as it is more beneficial in a life cycle perspective than primary production. This second scenario is what we should be working towards collectively, but we have some distance to go in the battery sector.

It is worth noting that environmental impacts do not end at climate change (i.e. carbon footprint) and although net zero is at the forefront of sustainable goals around the world, recycling, as with any other raw material processing technique, can have other implications for the environment. For example, the use and generation of particular chemicals may carry significant acidification or eutrophication burdens, the operation of certain recycling machinery may generate particulate emissions or consume a lot of natural resources in the form of fossil fuels, and hydrometallurgical approaches may require substantial water consumption. LCA is uniquely positioned to not only quantify all scopes of carbon emissions (direct and embodied), but up to 16 other impact categories, allowing technology developers to consider their complete influence on the environment. It’s not easy to balance all impact categories, and not shift burdens from one category to another, but iterating on technologies with LCA insights in mind is a great start!

To enable this pursuit of net-zero targets requires continuous innovation and the adoption of advanced technologies. Recycling is no exception, as innovative processes are developed to extract, refine, and repurpose materials more efficiently. Technological advancements in recycling contribute to higher rates of material recovery, reduced energy consumption, and improved environmental outcomes. These innovations are vital for aligning recycling practices with the ambitious targets set forth in global sustainability agendas. As recycling becomes more widespread, cost-effective, intelligent and accessible, we can use it as a powerful tool in a sustainable society, but it should be employed as so in conjunction with reducing primary material impacts and more immediate circular economy approaches like reuse and remanufacturing first.

There’s Work To Be Done!

Recycling has the potential to be a linchpin in the pursuit of global net-zero targets, provided we optimise the processes involved. Its role encompasses resource conservation, emission reduction, waste reduction, and the establishment of circular economies. As nations and industries commit to ambitious sustainability goals, prioritizing and investing in recycling initiatives becomes essential for mitigating climate change (and other impacts) and creating a more resilient and sustainable future. However, recycling in a product supply chain doesn’t automatically bring the impact to net-zero - the activities must be optimised and less demanding that their primary offset to be truly effective, and this is where innovation in the sector shines! Through responsible, clever recycling practices, societies can transition towards a circular and low-carbon economy, contributing significantly to the overarching objective of achieving global net-zero targets.

If you would like to find out more about LCA methodologies within the circular economy space, or are looking to optimise recovery processes for sustainability, please contact our team and we’d be happy to chat with you!