Win-Win: Anthropogenic circularity for metal criticality and carbon neutrality

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.

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at 10.1007/s11783-023-1623-2 and is accessible for authorized users.