Towards a comprehensive recovery system for critical metals in Switzerland

In Switzerland, WEEE management systems aiming at an optimised, environmentally sound disposal of hazardous components and recovery of economically valuable materials are implemented for more than 15 years. Still, today recovery rates of many critical metals are low. In order to evaluate strategies to increase critical metal recovery rates within existing Swiss end of life (EoL) product collection and recovery systems (including EoL vehicles), the following guiding questions were, are or will be addressed in a number of projects: What is the state of the art of the “criticality” discourse? What do we know about concentrations of critical metals in consumer products? Which overall critical metal stocks and flows result from forward and reverse diffusion of these products? What would a sustainable recovery strategy for critical metals look like? Based on the first results of the projects tentative answers can be given, however, for critical metals such as rare earth elements significant knowledge gaps still remain.