When recycling is worth its weight in tin foil

Global supplies of metals are running out – it’s a cast-iron reason to recycle
Anjana Ahuja
Being a cheapskate — I bought charity shop clothes before they were “vintage”, and have been known to haggle in a restaurant — I sometimes bring my own sandwiches to work. There is always a ready supply of fillings that require immediate consumption, ranging from hardened cheddar wedges through to ham slices that are beginning to fold themselves and jars of pickle purchased in the previous millennium. Tightly wrapped in foil, these squishy bundles of frugality are a homely snub to all those inferior, overpriced examples in the local sandwich shop. Except that I am not being frugal at all. In a century’s time, according to Geoscientist, the magazine of the Geological Society of London, using aluminium as a disposable lunchbox will be as wasteful as binning gold.
While everyone has heard of peak oil (when the rate of oil extraction reaches its peak, followed by a decline), the magazine has unearthed academics who worry about peak metal. Among them is Harald Sverdrup, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Lund in Sweden. He says that “the 20 most important metals will move into scarcity in the next 100 years”. Thieves have already deduced this, which is why they are nicking copper wires, aluminium tubing and lead from church roofs, and selling them for record prices as scrap.
The professor has done a bit of numerical jiggery pokery to see how much more tin foil, among other things, is squirrelled away in terrestrial rocks. He added up known metal deposits, calculated the rate that these are being plundered, and took into account such factors as hoarding (as an asset when prices are low, in preparation for selling when prices rise). He bunged them all into a mathematical model partly based on the Hubbert curve, an ominous little bell curve that simulates how our oil reserves will dry up. Sverdrup found that helium, silver, gold, zinc, tin and indium will dwindle in about 30 years’ time. This is obviously bad news for small children, who regard a helium balloon as a de rigueur birthday accessory. It is more alarming for the electronics industry, which uses indium to make semiconductors and in liquid crystal displays. Given the amount of stuff that has tin in it, a shortage is much feared. Three other metals that underpin the electronics industry — platinum (electrodes and fine wires), lithium (batteries) and gallium (semiconductors) — are predicted to reach their peak in 200 years.
Sverdrup wants us to recycle more of the metal we use. At present, old electronics goods are likely to be abandoned as landfill. The answer might be to manufacture metal-rich goods, such as washing machines, in a way that makes the parts easier to recycle. “You don’t throw gold or platinum or silver away,” Sverdrup says. “That same logic applies to other metals. Once nickel, say, gets to £80 or £100 a kilo ... that’s throwing away money.”
The Swede is not the only doomsayer. Two years ago, scholars at Yale looked at how the numbers stacked up for copper, which is vital for electricity supply. They calculated that each American uses the equivalent of 170kg copper. If the world population reached 10 billion by 2100, we would need 1.7 billion tonnes of the stuff. The academics estimate that the Earth holds 1.6 billion tonnes that can be dug out. That’s a far more optimistic forecast than that issued by the US Geological Survey, which reckons that there is less than 1 billion tonnes available.
Are their figures realistic? “Certainly every square metre of earth hasn’t been dug up, but there aren’t many places that haven’t been investigated pretty thoroughly,” the Yale researchers told Scientific American.
So, is there any good news? Yes, if you’re China. Not only does it have the world’s largest tin reserves, but the country’s State Reserves Bureau went on a mammoth buying spree for other metals when prices fell last year. You could call it a copper-bottomed, golden opportunity — with a silver lining.