Designers of everything from mobile phones to electric car batteries should make their products far easier to recycle to offset soaring demand for metals, two United Nations reports recommended on Wednesday.
Products should be made to become “designer minerals” at the end of their lifetimes so they can more simply be broken up and stripped of metals ranging from copper to gold, according to the twin studies.
“Global metal needs will be three to nine times larger than all the metals currently used in the world” if demand in emerging economies rises to levels of rich nations, said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme.
The total amount of steel in use in the United States, for instance, was an estimated 11 to 12 metric tonnes per person in 2010, compared with 1.5 tonnes in China.
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