Abstract
In 1972, almost 50 years ago, a book was published that shaped the worldwide discussion on ecological issues like no other, indeed, in some ways initiated this discussion in the first place: “The Limits to Growth” (Report to the Club of Rome) by Dennis Meadows and his associates.
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Notes
- 1.
At the time, Dennis Meadows was the head of a research group at the American Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that produced the findings on which the book is based.
- 2.
Humans extract about 70 Gt from the earth every year, mainly 40 Gt of building materials (gravel, sand, etc.), 15 Gt of fossil fuels and 10 Gt of metal ores. Even if it continues to do so for the next 10,000 years, it will not even have moved 0.1% of this upper continental crust.
- 3.
In individual cases, there are also deposits with even higher concentrations.
- 4.
In technical jargon, it is also called the question of copper resources.
- 5.
Despite this long history: more steel is produced in one year today than in the entire history before 1900!
- 6.
In recycling, one distinguishes between two types of scrap. “New scrap” is metal waste already generated in the production process of iron or steel products; it is usually 100% recycled, i.e. returned to the production process. “Old scrap” is steel products at the end of their service life or steel in buildings that are demolished; it is only the recycling of this old scrap that ultimately matters when considering raw materials.
- 7.
In other words, current annual steel waste volumes are on the order of the annual steel use in the 1970s.
- 8.
It is important to mention that with “steel use”, we denote here what is technically termed “true steel use” – meaning that the import/export-balances of steel-containing products are taken into account when calculating the steel use of a country or a region.
- 9.
The German Fraunhofer Institute UMSICHT published a comprehensive study on this several years ago: Fraunhofer (2016).
- 10.
The current waste volume of just under 30 million tons is therefore roughly equivalent to the use of aluminum (in products) in the 1990s.
- 11.
Due to the availability of data, we do not use the EU + USA as a basis for the Western countries in this case, but Europe + North America. However, the EU + USA are responsible for the vast majority of the figures shown here.
- 12.
E.g., in Bardi (2013). Since huge, easily exploitable phosphorus deposits were newly discovered in Morocco in 2011, this discussion has largely fallen silent.
- 13.
Another 1300 million tons or so of phosphorus were extracted from the deposits in this process, but are found in the residues of mine production.
- 14.
Real scarcity is meant here; temporary shortages on world markets may occur, cf. below.
- 15.
There is the objection here that, as raw material concentrations decrease, these technologies will increasingly have to work with chemical substances and will therefore tend to be increasingly harmful to the environment. This will be true in some cases, but only underscores the need – which exists anyway – for high safety and environmental standards to be mandated in raw material mining. The current environmental impacts of commodity mining are well documented (World Atlas of Desertification (EU 2018), Chapter “Mining”): today, only 0.05−0.1 million km2, a relatively small area, is affected.
- 16.
For example, in Bardi (2013).
- 17.
With more realistic assumptions – halving of the lithium content, recycling rate at 75% – it is only 0.25 million tons/year. This means that even the currently known lithium resources will last for more than 200 years.
References
Reports from international organizations
EU (2018), World Atlas of Desertification: wad.jrc.ec.europa.eu/download
Reports and websites of international organizations
Copper Development Association (2017), Annual Data 2017: copper.org/resources/market_data/pdfs/annual_data.pdf
Books and articles
Bardi U (2013), “Der geplünderte Planet,” oekom, München
Chen M and Graedel T (2016), “A half-century of global phosphorus flows, stocks, production, consumption, recycling, and environmental impacts,” Global Environmental Change 36
Fraunhofer (2016), “Technische, ökonomische, ökologische und gesellschaftliche Faktoren von Stahlschrott,” Studie im Auftrag des BDSV, https://www.bdsv.org/fileadmin/service/publikationen/Studie_Fraunhofer_Umsicht.pdf
Glöser S, Soulier M, Espinoza L (2013), “Dynamic Analysis of Global Copper Flows,” Environmental Science & Technology 47 (12)
Soulier M, Glöser S, Goldmann D, Espinoza L (2014), “Dynamic Analysis of European Copper Flows,” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 129
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Unnerstall, T. (2022). Raw Materials. In: Factfulness Sustainability. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65558-0_10
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