Abstract
Resource depletion and environmental degradation have fueled a burgeoning discipline of anthropogenic circularity since the 2010s. It generally consists of waste reuse, remanufacturing, recycling, and recovery. Circular economy and “zero-waste” cities are sweeping the globe in their current practices to address the world’s grand concerns linked to resources, the environment, and industry. Meanwhile, metal criticality and carbon neutrality, which have become increasingly popular in recent years, denote the material’s feature and state, respectively. The goal of this article is to determine how circularity, criticality, and neutrality are related. Upscale anthropogenic circularity has the potential to expand the metal supply and, as a result, reduce metal criticality. China barely accomplished 15 % of its potential emission reduction by recycling iron, copper, and aluminum. Anthropogenic circularity has a lot of room to achieve a win-win objective, which is to reduce metal criticality while also achieving carbon neutrality in a near closed-loop cycle. Major barriers or challenges for conducting anthropogenic circularity are deriving from the inadequacy of life-cycle insight governance and the emergence of anthropogenic circularity discipline. Material flow analysis and life cycle assessment are the central methodologies to identify the hidden problems. Mineral processing and smelting, as well as end-of-life management, are indicated as critical priority areas for enhancing anthropogenic circularity.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (No. 92062111) and the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2019YFC1908501).
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Highlights
• Anthropogenic circularity science is an emerging interdisciplinary field.
• Anthropogenic circularity was one effective strategy against metal criticality.
• Carbon neutrality is becoming the new industry paradigm around the world.
• Growing circularity could potentially minimize the CO2 emission.
Author Biography
Dr. Xianlai Zeng is currently an associate professor in the School of Environment at Tsinghua University, China. He obtained his Bachelor (2002) and Master (2005) degrees from Northwest A&F University, and Ph. D (2014) from Tsinghua University. He worked as a technical advisor for the United Nations Development Programme (2015), visiting staff at Coventry University (2012), visiting professor at Macquarie University (2017), and Fulbright fellow at Yale University (2018–2019). His areas of specialization and interest include waste recycling and circular economy. He proposed the emerging concept and framework of anthropogenic circularity. He has published around 100 articles and books, which have been cited for more than 8000 times with an H-index of 38 (Google Scholar). As the PI, he has chaired over 20 international and national competitive projects related to waste management, metal sustainability, and circular economy. In addition, Dr. Zeng has received 10 granted patents and led one group standard of resource and environmental properties of industrial solid waste. He has chaired or organized a dozen leading international academic meetings or workshops on material flow and waste management.
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Zeng, X. Win-Win: Anthropogenic circularity for metal criticality and carbon neutrality. Front. Environ. Sci. Eng. 17, 23 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-023-1623-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-023-1623-2