What is ‘hot air’?

THE BEYOND HOT AIR TEAM – DECEMBER 20, 2023

Beyond Hot Air is a conversation about the green transition and the minerals required to make it happen. As a group of researchers and practitioners, when we first got together to discuss this topic, we realised that in different fields and disciplines (geology, social science, industry, politics) there is a lot of misleading information and…

Single-use vaping and lithium waste: a UK perspective

EMMA WILSON (ECW Energy & APRI) – FEBRUARY 22, 2024

In January 2024, the UK government announced a ban on disposable e-cigarettes, primarily out of concern for the health of young people. The decision should also address the huge amounts of waste created by the burgeoning trend in the use of single-use vapes. UK vapers currently discard more than 5 million disposable vapes each week, with their built-in lithium-ion batteries.

Too much consumption –  too little resources?! Types and quantities of Critical Raw Materials needed to meet growing demands on the globe

FRANK MELCHER (University of Leoben) – APRIL 3, 2024

Batteries for electric vehicles, wind turbines, mobile phones, computers – these users of critical raw materials (CRM) are everyday items, and demand is growing. But there are a lot more uses for CRM, especially in well-established industries. Unless Western economies reduce their consumption very substantially, more CRMs are needed.

Critical Raw Materials and the construction of criticality

GABRIEL EYSELEIN (University of Vienna) – APRIL 9, 2024

Raw materials (RM) are a crucial part of our everyday lives and the backbone of the economy: Nearly every economic process starts in some form with raw materials. Whereas some of these materials are omnipresent, like oil, others remain outside the broader public’s eye, like niobium or bismuth. But from time to time, and often because of technological developments or scandals connected to their extraction, certain raw materials step into the spotlight.

Photo credit: Lithium mine at Bolivia´s Uyuni Salt Flat, on a CBERS4 MUX yesterday´s image” by Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra/INPE is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.