I had a very interesting day at the North East Recycling Forum annual conference yesterday. I don’t attend a lot of events I’m not speaking at these days, but I wanted to catch up with the network members. To my delight the emerging theme from the speakers was one of my current hot topics – a possible ‘resource crunch’. The killer question is are we focussing too much on outputs (waste, pollution, carbon emissions) at the exclusion of inputs (raw material, energy, water etc)?
The idea of a ‘resource war’ was mentioned more than once, meaning either commercial battles between companies for ever decreasing pools of virgin material, or indeed actual shooting-at-each-other battles between nations trying to protect their economic interests. Global extraction of resources are projected to hit double 1980 rates by 2020. Mineral ores are the fastest riser – predicted to rise by 200% over this period compared to an 81% increase in oil consumption. As a result, many resources are starting to become hard to get hold of: oil, rare earth metals, platinum group metals etc.
This issue is starting to go from jaw-jaw to war-war on the ground (at least in the commercial sense) – a number of manufacturing giants are starting to invest in the recycling industry to ensure a flow of materials into the future. Renault have bought into metal reprocessors. David Palmer-Jones, CEO of waste company  SITA, told us that they themselves were investing in plastic-to-diesel plants to hedge against the risk of rising oil prices to their own operations.
There’s a big challenge for the recycling industry here – to shift mindset from waste diversion to raw material production There’s a threat too as, if they don’t make the shift, they could get left behind those who do either from within the industry or manufacturers setting up their own functions (eg InterfaceFLOR’s carpet recycling).  I asked the question how far along this path the waste industry had gone – the CEO of the Chartered Institute of Waste Managers, Steve Lee, said he believes they are “in the early stages of a quiet revolution.”
Lastly there’s the much bigger risk to the manufacturers themselves. Many modern technologies, from high performance steels to the ubiquitous iPhone, rely on elements whose whose traditional sources are dwindling. There are three choices: find a substitute material, start sourcing recovered material, or stick your head in the sand and hope for a miracle. I don’t recommend the last one.