Metals recycling industry associations

Secondary Supply by Metal — Gold and Aluminium Climb While Copper, Nickel, and Silver Fall Behind

1. Copper, nickel, and aluminium: the IEA's divergence finding

The International Energy Agency reports that despite growing policy ambition, recycled-material use has failed to keep pace with rising primary consumption for several core industrial metals. For copper, the share of secondary supply (including direct-use scrap) in total demand fell from 37% in 2015 to 33% in 2023; for nickel the recycled share fell from 33% to 26% over the same period (International Energy Agency, Recycling of Critical Minerals). Aluminium is the exception: its recycled share rose modestly from 32% to 35% over the same period, a result the IEA attributes to well-established waste-management infrastructure and supportive regulation already in place for the metal (International Energy Agency, Recycling of Critical Minerals). By contrast, when measured as recovered volumes relative to available end-of-life feedstock rather than total demand, recycling rates (not supply shares) surged to over 40% for nickel and cobalt and to 20% for lithium in 2023 — illustrating that battery-metal recycling infrastructure is scaling even as absolute recycled-supply share lags surging primary demand (International Energy Agency, Recycling of Critical Minerals). An earlier OECD assessment put secondary production for steel, aluminium, and copper at roughly 20% of global output, and below 1% for many other industrially important metals, with the secondary share of steel and aluminium output having declined significantly since 2000 even as absolute recycling rates for most metals remain below 25% (OECD, Government Support for Metal Production — Policy Highlights).

2. Gold: record recycling supply, but muted price response

The World Gold Council reports that full-year 2025 recycled gold supply rose to 1,404.3 tonnes, up 3% year-on-year and the highest level since 2012, even as total gold supply reached a series record of 5,002.3 tonnes on record mine production (World Gold Council, Gold Demand Trends Full Year 2025 — Supply). The Council flags this as a muted response to a 67% increase in the U.S. dollar gold price over the year — historically, sharp price rallies trigger much larger recycling surges, suggesting holders are increasingly treating gold as a long-duration store of value rather than a liquidity source (World Gold Council, Gold Demand Trends: Q4 and Full Year 2025). Quarterly data through the year showed recycling oscillating in the 324–366 tonne range per quarter, confirming that the annual total reflects a broad-based rise rather than a single event (World Gold Council, Gold Demand Trends Q3 2025 — Supply).

3. Silver: recycling structurally unable to close the deficit

The Silver Institute reports 2024 silver recycling of 193.9 million ounces, a 12-year high driven by an 11% jump in silverware recycling in Western markets as prices firmed (Silver Institute, Silver Supply & Demand). For 2025, the Institute projects recycling of roughly 197.6–211.3 million ounces depending on the estimate cited, against a market now in its fifth successive structural deficit, with mined supply essentially flat around 813–819 million ounces and total available supply remaining below one billion ounces against far larger industrial demand (Silver Institute, The Silver Market Is on Course for Fifth Successive Structural Market Deficit). Roughly 74% of silver supply is produced as a byproduct of base-metal mining rather than primary silver mining, and primary mine supply's share of the total fell to a new low of 26% in 2025 — meaning silver recycling volumes are constrained by the same byproduct economics that limit primary output, not by scrap availability alone (The Silver Institute — Silver Supply & Demand).

The Bureau of International Recycling — Steel Scrap's Scorekeeper, Now Rebranding the Category

1. BIR's institutional footprint and 2025 record year

The Bureau of International Recycling (BIR), headquartered in Brussels, reported membership of nearly 1,100 organisations across 71 countries in 2025 under President Susie Burrage, with an 86% retention rate and record attendance at its World Recycling Conventions — over 2,000 participants in Valencia and nearly 1,200 in Bangkok, the federation's first convention in Thailand (World Trade Scanner, Global Recycling Body Climbs to New Heights (BIR 2025 Annual Report)). BIR itself called 2025 “one of the most financially successful years in its history”, reflecting the recycling sector's growing institutional weight in global metals policy debates (World Trade Scanner, Global Recycling Body Climbs to New Heights (BIR 2025 Annual Report)).

2. World Steel Recycling in Figures: the headline 2025 numbers

BIR's Ferrous Division, through Statistics Advisor Rolf Willeke, released the 17th edition of “World Steel Recycling in Figures” covering 2021–2025 at the Gothenburg convention in mid-2026: global crude steel output fell 1.9% year-on-year to approximately 1.85 billion tonnes, yet recycled-steel consumption across covered markets rose 4.5% to 480 million tonnes, and BIR/worldsteel calculations put total annual recycled-steel use in global steelmaking at approximately 630 million tonnes, avoiding nearly 950 million tonnes of CO2 emissions (SteelOrbis, BIR: Global Recycled Steel Consumption Rises Despite Lower Crude Steel Output in 2025). BIR has formally adopted the term “recycled steel” in place of “steel scrap” specifically to strengthen public understanding of the material's role in decarbonised, electric-arc-furnace steelmaking (SteelOrbis, BIR: Old Trade Rules No Longer Apply, Reshaping Recycling). Recycled steel's share of national crude-steel output varies enormously by market structure: 87.7% in Turkey and 66.4% in the U.S. (both scrap/EAF-dominant), versus just 23.6% in China, which remains reliant on blast-furnace primary production (SteelOrbis, BIR: Global Recycled Steel Market Sees Brief Stability Before Demand Weakens).

3. Trade concentration and geopolitical exposure

Recycled-steel trade remains heavily concentrated: the EU-27 is the world's largest exporter (16.68 million tonnes in 2025) and Turkey the largest importer (18.77 million tonnes), buying primarily from the U.S. and the Netherlands (SteelOrbis, BIR: Global Recycled Steel Consumption Rises Despite Lower Crude Steel Output in 2025). The U.S., the world's second-largest exporter, saw export volumes fall 18.4% in 2025 to 11.77 million tonnes, underscoring how tariff and trade-policy shifts can move faster than underlying scrap generation — a volatility factor directly relevant to any commodity index or tokenized product using recycled-metal benchmarks as an input (SteelOrbis, BIR: Global Recycled Steel Consumption Rises Despite Lower Crude Steel Output in 2025).

Europe's 25% Recycling Bet and the Tightened Global Rules for Moving E-Waste

1. CRMA's 2030 recycling benchmark and the scale of the gap

Regulation (EU) 2024/1252, the Critical Raw Materials Act, adopted 18 March 2024, sets a binding benchmark that by 2030 at least 25% of the EU's annual consumption of each strategic raw material should be met by domestic recycling capacity, one leg of the Act's wider extraction/processing/recycling benchmark structure (ÖFSE, What Will the EU Critical Raw Materials Act Achieve?). The scale of the required ramp-up is severe: the average end-of-life recycling input rate across all Critical Raw Materials is currently only 8.3%, and for several strategic raw materials — notably permanent-magnet rare earths and multiple battery metals — the current EU recycling baseline sits below 1% of annual consumption (Sustainability Directory, EU Critical Raw Materials Act Mandates 25% Recycling Target by 2030; Ti22 Strategies, Recycling Critical Materials: The 15% Target That Could Change Everything). The European Commission continues to develop implementing measures under the Act, with a further Commission communication issued 3 December 2025 addressing strategic-project selection and monitoring mechanisms that feed into the recycling benchmark's enforcement (European Commission, COM(2025) 945 Final).

2. Basel Convention e-waste amendments: in force since January 2025

Amendments to the Basel Convention's e-waste annexes entered into force on 1 January 2025, fundamentally reclassifying the transboundary movement of used electronics and scrap: all non-hazardous e-waste is now classified as “waste requiring special consideration,” meaning even devices presumed harmless must undergo the Convention's Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure before crossing borders (SK tes, Why the New E-Waste Rules Matter Now and What Businesses Need to Know). The practical compliance burden is already visible in recycler guidance published as late as July 2026, underscoring that many operators are still adapting processes eighteen months after the amendments took effect (CompuCycle, 2025 Basel Convention Amendments: What's Changed for U.S. Electronic Recycling). The scale of the underlying problem the amendments target is stark: independent monitoring found that only 22.3% of global e-waste mass was documented as formally collected and recycled in an environmentally sound manner, leaving the large majority of discarded electronics — and the gold, silver, copper, and cobalt they contain — outside formal, traceable recycling systems (IISD Earth Negotiations Bulletin, Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes).