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Critical Raw Materials CRMs are crucial to Europe’s Economy, but they also have high risk associated to their supply. CRMs are used in environmental technologies, consumer electronics, health steel making, defense technology, space exploration and aviation. However, there is also lack of viable substitutes due to very unique and reliable properties of those materials. Thus, EU should find a strategy to reduce the Union’s reliance on CRMs.

The EU has many and uncharacterised and unexplored deposits. However, the existing economic and regulatory climate, combined with growing land use competition, limits the exploitation. Thus, in terms of recycling, secondary supplies can reduce the demand for primary materials, overcoming the deposit deficiency. PGMs (Pt, Pd, Rh) which are included in CRMs, are mainly used in automobile catalytic converters to reduce NOx to nitrogen as well as to oxidise CO. The concentration of the PGMs in catalytic converters is higher than in ores, therefore, the recovery of the PGMs from spent car catalytic converters could be a significant source to obtain these precious metals, reprocess and produce new functional materials. Thus, it is of major importance to map the recovery of raw materials, such as Platinum Group Metals PGMs from products across Europe.