Skip to content

prophecyrevelations

Prophecy & current events

Menu

  • Home
  • About us
  • Archived Articles
  • Contact

NWO engineers have no intention of allowing private vechicle or property ownership in other words freedom

 
 

According to the projections of the WEF’s “Global Future Councils,” private property and privacy will be abolished during the next decade.

CIRCULAR ECONOMY

3 circular economy approaches to reduce demand for critical metals

Jul 18, 2022
  • Shifting from fossil fuels to renewables requires huge amounts of critical metals.
  • Recycling alone won’t be enough to sustain the amount of materials needed
  • We need to increase sharing, reuse and a preference for longevity to reduce demand.

We need a clean energy revolution, and we need it now. But this transition from fossil fuels to renewables will need large supplies of critical metals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, to name a few. Shortages of these critical minerals could raise the costs of clean energy technologies.

One obvious route is to mine more virgin material, but this comes with its own costs and potentially unintended consequences. Another solution commonly discussed is to recycle more and use the metals already in circulation. The complication is that we do not currently have enough metals in circulation, and even with recycling taken into consideration, mineral production is still forecasted to increase by nearly 500%. So how should we proceed?

A fully circular economy is much more than recycling; it is keeping materials at their highest value. It is time to look beyond circular materials. These three mindset changes can help reduce demand for critical metals.

On the circular economy system diagram by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, metals fall on the right-hand side of the diagram. This diagram shows a prioritization of approaches. The levers in the inner circles such as “maintain” and “remanufacturing” should be prioritized over those further outside, such as recycling. Source: Ellen McArthur Foundation.

1. Go from owning to using

Be honest, you likely have at least one old mobile phone tucked in the bottom of a drawer. Possibly an unused hard drive taking up space too. You aren’t alone. The average car or van in England is driven just 4% of the time. While most already have a personal phone, 39% of workers globally have employer-provided laptops and mobile phones.

This is not at all resource efficient. More sharing can reduce ownership of idle equipment and thus material usage. Car sharing platforms such as Getaround and BlueSG have already seized that opportunity to offer vehicles where you pay per hour used.

To enable a broader transition from ownership to usership, the way we design things and systems need to change too. For example, car sharing is made possible by new keyless unlocking features. Similarly, user profiles that create a distinction for work and personal use on the same device is needed to reduce the number of devices per person. A design process that focuses on fulfilling the underlying need instead of designing for product purchasing is fundamental to this transition. This is the mindset needed to redesign cities to reduce private vehicles and other usages.

2. Enable preference for longevity

Who doesn’t want to get the most out of everyday products like washing machines, and increasingly domestic solar panels? Increasing a product’s longevity can reap significant dividends. Keeping a smart phone for five years instead of three reduces the phone’s annual carbon footprint by 31%.

The trouble is product companies are incentivized to sell more, not to design for longevity. While some product makers are transitioning to subscription models that reward longevity, a bigger opportunity lies with commerce platforms. Today, customers can search for products by price, brand, colour, technical specifications, and increasingly sustainability claims. Durability needs to become a feature too. Niche e-commerce site Buy Me Once offers only products that last for life. Their customers save both time and money, in addition to environmental benefits. However, more data and consistent durability metrics are needed before we can easily compare and choose durable products.

DISCOVER

What is the World Economic Forum doing about the circular economy?

 

 

 

3. Build pride in second life

What if something can no longer be used for the purpose it was originally sold for? When an electric vehicle battery is replaced, it may still have up to 80% capacity remaining. Already, retired electric vehicle batteries have been repurposed to power streetlights and a stadium. General Motors is beginning to design batteries with the ease of transition to a second life in mind. Refurbished consumer electronics are slowly coming into fashion with start-ups such as Back Market and Refurbed.

In the business-to-business world, increasing lifespan by remanufacturing brings the added value of reducing cost and delivery time. Remanufacturing constitutes more in-depth work that restores used equipment to its original performance level. For large-scale investments, such as wind turbines, it can almost double the return on original investment by extending the turbine life by up to 20 years.

Manganese nodule with a deep-sea sponge. MiningImpact Expedition SO242. Source: ROV KIEL6000, GEOMAR.

Introducing more of these circular models require significant effort and changes to our current way of life. Yet unless we can reduce metal demand quickly, we will need more new mines. Mining has been called the “blind spot” of the green energy transition. On land, it has been associated with biodiversity loss, overuse of water resources, tailings waste, labour and geopolitical issues. Interest is emerging to get these minerals from the deep-sea, but this is not without other environmental risks. If mining begins there, species not yet discovered by science could go extinct. Over 100 organizations and more than 600 experts are cautioning against doing so.

Much of the debate around opening new mines is shaped around supply and demand. A 2022 World Economic Forum white paper identified the question, “do we need these minerals?” as one of the knowledge gaps that need to be filled before a decision could be made on deep-sea mineral stewardship.

This transition to a fully circular model is now more urgent than ever. If we are to move forward, we need to reconsider at a systemic level how much we use, as well as how we can reduce usage. Unless we can dramatically reduce current metal usage, the debate and tension on finding new mines will not go away.

Have you read?

  • The answer to the aluminium industry’s emissions issue? Aluminium’s infinite recyclability

  • Should deep-sea minerals be part of battery supply chains?

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

 

NWO engineers have no intention of allowing private vechicle or property ownership in other words freedom
buddy July 26, 2022July 26, 2022 Current event, liberty No Comments
  • ← US officials voice DNA biowarfare fears
  • The Papacy advocates indigenous rights (such as Marbo which was instigated by a Jesuit) while being the main advocate for abuse  →

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Archives

  • October 2023
  • July 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • September 2018
  • July 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013

Meta

  • Log in

Copyright © 2025 prophecyrevelations All rights reserved.