Business case

Refining and processing ores and producing ferrous and non-ferrous metal and glass products, including packaging

Metal and Glass

Utilise waste streams as a source of secondary resources and recover waste for reuse and recycling

Use waste as a resource

Reduced use of virgin materials and/or an increase of the use of secondary and bio-based materials

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

Using waste materials that have been processed and recycled to produce new products within the same industry

Using closed loop recycled materials

Impact on the availability of resources as well as their effect on living organisms, ecosystems, and components of the environment.

Ecological Impact

Extracting resources and processing them to produce materials for use bysociety

Materials and Fuels

Cycle strategies aim to cycle and reuse materials at their highest value: they maximise the volume of secondary materials re-entering the economy, ultimately minimising the need for virgin material inputs and therefore also narrowing flows. Of course, virgin materials will always be needed to a degree: all materials degrade and can’t be cycled infinitely, use energy, and require blending with virgin materials to maintain strength and functionality.

Cycle

Make collected and sorted recyclables available for use by citizens, small businesses up to large scale industrial processes. 

Use recyclables

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within the same industry

Valorise waste streams - closed loop

Impacts

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Industries

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The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

Urban Opportunities

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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Promoted by Coors Light
Less than 1 percent of rare earth magnets that are used in everyday tools are recycled. Scott Dunn, CEO of the Urban Mining Company, believes reusing these rare magnets are critical to a cleaner future.
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United States

Urban Mining Company

Urban Mining Company&nbsp;turns used magnets into thermostats.

Used magnets become thermostats

Other

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

Nace Sectors

Permanent magnets (specifically neodymium-iron-boron magnets, aka “NdFeB” magnets) are critical to many of the applications that we rely on in our modern lives. They can be found in a range of products from consumer electronics (hard disk drives, speakers, and headphones), to electric motors, generators and automobiles. Manufacturing NdFeB magnets from virgin metals relies on continual resource inputs, and is very environmentally taxing. Despite this, hundreds of thousands of tons of NdFeB magnets sit in landfills as the products that contain them are thrown away, often after their first use.

greater than half of all the electricity in the world is consumed by electric motors.

Austin

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By using the magnets found in end-of-use products as a feedstock, Urban Mining Company (UMC) has patented a process whereby they are able to reprocess the scrap magnets into new, custom made magnets. UMC’s magnets not only come with improved properties compared to the starting material, the fact that UMC uses recycled magnet as feedstock allows them to protect themselves from raw material price fluctuations that plague the rest of the market. This process is known as Magnet-to-Magnet™, or M2M™. Being able to produce magnets in this way reduces energy consumption, the impact on the environment, as well as the landfill space occupied by end-of-use magnets.

Urban Mining Company - Finding rare earth elements above ground, not underground

Article / Report

Contributing to the improvement of biodiversity including species diversity, total number of protected species, and ecosystem health

Biodiversity

Producing building materials and finished and semi-finished building products for construction

Construction Materials and Products

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

Environmental assessment & permits

Extracting resources and minerals from the earth, such as coal, oil, gas, iron, bauxite, sand, clay, etc.

Mining

Impact on the quantity or quality of jobs, and shifts in the labour market

Jobs

A framework of policy instruments that enabled and encourage the transition to the circular economy

Policy Instruments

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A framework of policy instruments that enable and stimulate the transition to the circular economy

Africa

Mining is the most important source of all the raw materials used to build and power up our modern societies, ranging from metals such as iron and aluminum used for the Construction of automobiles and other machinery, steel used for heavy construction works, Uranium used as fuel for power plants, and lithium and nickel used for making smartphone batteries. The pace at which the global population is growing, and technology is evolving, continuously calls for more and more extraction of these mineral resources in order to satisfy the ever-growing global needs. However, these resources are finite, and their extraction Comes at a cost to the environment; so, scientists are obliged to look towards more sustainable and practical ways of supplying these resources without compromising the environment or future generations. One of the ways forward is to use tailings sands and mine waste rock aggregates for construction works, thereby reducing the need to mine new resources (sand). Sand on the other hand which &nbsp;is a non-renewable resource and is the &nbsp;is the second most extracted natural resource after water by volume used in almost all sectors of development such as construction and manufacturing processes constitutes 85% of material mined from the earth. Despite the importance of sand, the illegal, unsustainable overexploitation in developing countries possesses a huge threat to ecosystems and community. To solve this problem, tailings sand and other mines wastes aggregates&nbsp;&nbsp;hold the potential of being used for construction purposes for example construction of houses, embankments, Pavements and other related infrastructure