The Critical Materials and Resource Efficiency group (CARE) models the distribution, exposure and fate of materials required by technologies and products and investigates on resource efficiency and recovery and reintegration into the product life cycle.

Research activities and services

The CARE group is dedicated to meet the following key challenges:

• Modeling of stocks and flows of materials embedded in products from emerging technologies: Development of representative and reliable data and to anticipate future material demands, stocks and flows along the product life cycle, including the recycling chain.
• Resource efficiency of new technologies: Assessment of the effects on resource efficiency of new technologies through dematerialization, the change of raw materials and the use of critical metals. Quantification, evaluation of trade-offs and associated environmental and social impacts of technologies and comparison of primary with secondary resource provision.
• Recovery und reintegration of secondary material resources from emerging technologies: Assessment and validation of the efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of recovery processes for secondary material resources.
   

Projects

Team members

Contact

Heinz W. Böni

Empa
Technology & Society Laboratory
Lerchenfeldstrasse 5
CH-9014 St. Gallen

Tel.:     +41 58 756 78 58
Fax:     +41 58 756 78 62
www.empa.ch/tsl