The presence of rare earth elements and critical metals in waste electric and electronic equipment: challenges for recovery

The fast growth of waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) is not only a threat to our environment, but also a great source of rare earth elements (REEs) and critical metals (CMs). Despite the fact that Directive 2012/19/EU encourages the treatment of WEEE by setting targets for collection, re-use and recycling, it does not directly target the recycling of REEs and CMs. The insufficient data about the composition of REEs and CMs in electric and electronic equipment (EEE), the high recycling costs and the different motivations/interests of the stakeholders are some of the main inhibiting factors. Recently, scientific community pays much attention to the recovery and recycling of REEs and CMs due to several associated benefits. Hence this work highlights the economic importance of REEs and CMs in terms of their inevitability in EEE. Then, an overview of the supply risk of REEs and CMs and the challenges related to the recovery are provided.