Challenge number 1: Feed the loop

The growth in needs clearly shows that a lot of mineral and metal resources will still have to be exploited to feed the loop. Today we use in abundance metals that were previously useless: germanium, which is essential for our optical fibres, indium for our touch screens and lithium for our batteries are just a few examples.besoins démontre à l’évidence qu’il faudra encore exploiter beaucoup de ressources minérales et métalliques pour alimenter la boucle.

Recycling can of course help to reduce the extractive invoice, but above all, the resilience of metals in the anthropogenic cycle must be taken into account. It is estimated, for example, that the average lifetime of copper is about 40 years. Thus, even if we were able to collect it perfectly and recycle it without losing anything, we would have at our disposal at best the equivalent of the mining production of forty years ago, which is exactly half of today's needs!

Evolution of world copper consumption since 1900 according to USGS data.
Copper consumption has doubled over the last 40 years.