Recycling of Critical Metals in Green and Low-carbon Transition: Strategies and Countermeasures

As green and low-carbon transition has gained world-wide recognition and become the inherent requirement of fully building a modern socialist China, the consumption of critical metals will increase drastically in the next decades. Meanwhile, this will mean a continually increasing potential of critical metals recycling. Facing changes and pandemic unseen in a century and increasing geopolitical conflicts, it has become a strategic consensus on the national security level for Western countries like the United States and Europe Union to acknowledge and enhance the role of recycling in secure provision of critical metals. Here, in this study, we have discussed the future potentials and major challenges of critical metals recycling and reviewed the strategies proposed by the main industrialized countries. Based on this, we aim to help formulate China’s national strategies and countermeasures regarding critical metals recycling and thus contribute to supporting the achievement of China’s “dual carbon” ambition and its green and low-carbon transition in the next decades.