At the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France, the 1,491 gold, silver,
bronze and participation medals awarded to the teams were formed
from 206,000 recycled mobile phones weighing a total of 31 tons.
This very public statement served to highlight the growing use of
recycled materials in the context of a critical minerals
bottleneck.
By delving into the world of patents, this article investigates
how the race to mitigate the critical minerals bottleneck is
progressing, using battery recycling as a case study.
What are critical minerals?
The term "critical minerals" refers to the particular
minerals (including metals and their ores) used in modern devices
for which soaring demand is soon expected to outstrip the growth in
supply, potentially leading to a bottleneck in the manufacture of
clean energy technologies. In recent years, governments including
the UK2, the US3 and the EU4 have
drawn up strategies for addressing this bottleneck.
