Main take aways

• The opening of mines that also contain critical raw materials takes 3 to 5 years, munch longer than the price fluctuations of these materials, making investments in mining risky.
• The amount of consumers that can afford products containing critical raw materials increases faster than the growing world population, increasing the demand for critical raw materials.
• A shortage of critical raw materials could hamper the development of a high tech society as well as a zero carbon economy.
• Currently a lot of critical raw materials are practically not being recycled.

Some extra reading if you want to take this topic further:

• Oeko-institute from Darmstad, Germany, “Recycling critical raw materials from waste electronic equipment”
• Crital Raw materials and the EU: the list of critcal materials
• Substitution of critical raw materials in low-carbon technologies: lighting, wind turbines and electric vehicles