A new report released by the International Council on Mining and Metals offers a toolkit to help mining companies navigate and implement circularity in their businesses.
The Tools for Circularity were designed and released with the goal of helping mining companies to continue to minimise waste and maximise value – from sourcing and production to use and recovery.
The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) Director of Innovation, Bryony Clear Hill, said that ICMM has been working on circularity for the last three years.
“We know we need more metal to reach net zero and development goals, and all the numbers show that if we recycled everything we have, it still wouldn’t be enough,” she said. “Primary mining is part of the solution, and it’s the building block for the circular economy, because these materials can be infinitely recyclable in the right circumstances.”
When it comes to circularity, however, it’s not as easy as one organisation doing all the work.
“We talk about circularity and the contribution of mining and metals to a circular economy, but individual companies can’t create a circular economy alone. The circular economy is the big macro concept. But we can work to increase circularity within our companies and our industry,” Ms Clear Hill said.
Interrelated processes
In the report, ICMM uses the term circular economy to refer to the wider economic system that creates more circular and less wasteful outcomes, and circularity to refer to this within companies’ processes or products.
Ms Clear Hill said that circularity has to encompass both product and process circularity. Process circularity includes any sort of circular economy principles implemented across operations, such as resource efficiency practices, waste reduction initiatives and the valorisation of tailings. Product circularity focuses more on the lifecycle of products.
“If a company is working hard to produce copper using, for example, recycled water, renewable energy and aiming for zero waste, but then that copper is in use for a year and then ends up in landfill, that’s not circularity either. That’s why considering product circularity is also key.
“Circularity has to look at both of those things, because there’s limited value in producing responsible metal if it’s going to become waste and its value lost.”
Ms Clear Hill said that product and process circularity are interrelated, and this relationship is going to look slightly different in every company.
“Some companies are focusing very heavily on process and are aiming to be incredibly efficient and are really focusing on the circularity initiatives at the mining level. Then we see others that are moving into the secondary product space, and that’s fine. We need both; that’s what circularity means for our industry.”
Circularity in mining and metals
ICMM’s Tools for Circularity explores certain principles that can be implemented to progress circular economy, including:
- Designing out waste
- Extending lifecycles
- Turning waste into a resource
- Facilitating regeneration
- Operating in systems
- Capturing and sharing value
“Increasing circularity can have a significant impact on our climate and nature goals. These are key drivers in continuing to improve circularity – it can be a tool to help us contribute to wider sustainability goals,” Ms Clear Hill said.
The report provides details on several of the key drivers behind circularity implementation in the industry. These include economic value, regulatory and reporting requirements, stakeholder expectations, climate change, biodiversity and nature loss, and resource scarcity, supply security and resilience.
“If we can use fewer resources and make better uses of the resources that we have, you can have a huge knock-on impact on these other key priorities for the industry, for instance climate change mitigation, or supply chain security.”
ICMM report
Ms Clear Hill said that in creating Tools for Circularity, ICMM wanted to produce a concrete and accessible set of tools for the industry to help provide a nuanced understanding of what circularity means for the mining and metals industry.
“It’s part of what ICMM does – we work on these topics, and then we produce guidance which is useful for our members, but also becomes an industry point of reference that other mining and metals companies can use.”
ICMM held a workshop in Chile in November 2023 with its members, where the team spent several days trying to ascertain what role ICMM could play in helping mining and metals companies continue to improve their circularity.
“We came up with this massive, long list of potential things, and we ended up landing on the three tools which are in the report.”
“The first one is level setting; what does circularity mean for the industry, and how does that link to the way that circular economy is framed on a global level?”
Ms Clear Hill said that ICMM has been working towards educating and informing organisations to help them fully understand what circularity entails, and the value it presents.
“We want people to be able to use and understand phrases such as process circularity and product circularity.”
The second tool is the business case tool, which Ms Clear Hill said was to help companies identify the potential value, economic, environmental, or social, of improved circularity. Building this business case for external or internal buy-in is particularly important given the relative infancy of circularity within the sector.
“Relatively few companies actually make this someone’s job, and in most cases, it’s more of an approach which sits across a number of different job roles,” Ms Clear Hill said.
The third tool in Tools for Circularity is the case studies, which demonstrates a wide range of approaches that are currently being taken across the industry to improve circularity; both process and product. This tool also indicates the breadth and flexibility of approaches to improving circularity that are present in the industry.
An ongoing tool
In creating the Tools for Circularity, the ICMM aimed to develop a tool that companies would continue to refer to and use.
“It’s not supposed to be a report on our website which you read once; it’s supposed to be something that you go back to you, download sections of it, print off the checklist and use it.”
The different sections in the report all have different uses, but Ms Clear Hill said the most practical one people are likely to use again and again is the business case for circularity checklist.
The idea behind the checklist was to assist an individual in executing a circularity project within their company, with the checklist helping them to explain the value of the project within the organisation.
“If you’re trying to explain to the people who are less connected to the concepts of circularity, we heard from practitioners that it can be difficult to explain the value, because it can be perceived that these projects are a risk,” Ms Clear Hill said.
“The checklist prompts you to think through all the different potential forms of value that could be created by doing a circularity project so you’re not doing circularity for the sake of circularity but to deliver different forms of value.”
Following the release of Tools for Circularity, ICMM is now focused on assisting its members in implementation.
“The tools are out there. In terms of what’s next, it’s about supporting members in being able to use and operationalise these tools,” Ms Clear Hill said.
Reflecting on where the mining and metals industry sits on its circularity journey, Ms Clear Hill said that although there is a lot of good happening throughout the industry there’s more to be done.
“There is a need across the industry generally, for circularity to become more of a normalised concept, something that we’re comfortable talking about.”
“The first thing is understanding what circularity means for the industry and challenging this perception that circularity is only recycling. That’s where our report can really help to explain the actual breadth of circularity approaches that are needed and that could be taken.”
Ms Clear Hill said she hopes that the report can show people that circularity can be many different things and contribute massive value in different areas.
“I think what I’m really hoping that the report will do is help to spread the message that circularity for mining and metals means much more than just starting to recycle mobile phones,” she said.
“There is more to the role that mining and metals can play to improving global circularity, and all of it is crucial to meeting net zero and nature-positive goals, whilst aiding in the development of a global circular economy.”
