Rare earth elements and urban mines: Critical strategies for sustainable development

The production of waste electrical and electronic equipment (e-waste, WEEE) is continuously increasing. Consequently, there is strong demand of suitable policies to manage the situation and find effective mitigating solutions. Many economically interesting materials can be recovered from this kind of waste. Rare earth elements are one of them. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new technologies that enable to obtain rare earths from e-waste in order to increase the recycling capabilities in the countries without rare earth reserves. The overall objective is to change the strategic material recovery procedure in a way that will allow economic benefits without affecting the environment. Here we give an outline of the current situation regarding e-waste, rare earths availability, and recycling policy and techniques mainly focusing of the activity developed in the framework of the RECOLA (Recovery of lanthanides and other metals from WEEE) project.