Towards the Circular Metal Economy: A Roadmap for the UK

The workshop entitled “Towards the Circular Metal Economy: A Roadmap for the UK” took place at One Birdcage Walk, Westminster, London, on the 24th of November. This event aimed to present the ‘2050 Circular Metal Visions’ report, to define the steps that need to be taken to achieve the full circular metal economy in the UK by 2050 and meet other industry and academic experts.

The event was organised by the Work Package 3 team of the UKRI Interdisciplinary Centre for Circular Metals.

The workshop had three goals:

1. Build a timeline that sets out the key changes and actions needed to move from the present reality to the preferred visions. Twelve preferred visions have been outlined as a potential objective for achieving a fully circular metal economy by 2050. For each vision, practical snapshots of how the vision may be realised, as well as the barriers and opportunities that can affect the success of the vision were defined.
2. Prioritisation of the actions to be taken.
3. Identify how to reach the prioritised actions and who will develop them.

Within this event, the ‘2050 Circular Metal Visions’ report was launched. This report presents some initial findings of the WP3 ’Circular Business’ of the UKRI Interdisciplinary Centre for the Circular Metals. The purpose of this report is to present a set of visions of how circular economy can transform the metal value chain in the long term. The report presents 12 visions for 2050 and discusses the most significant challenges and opportunities that might respectively hinder and support the shift to those visions. The report is the result of research activities that brought together leading experts from academia, industry, and government to explore how the UK could transition to a circular metal economy.

This report was produced within the UKRI Interdisciplinary Centre for the Circular Metals (Principal Investigator Prof Zhongyun Fan), as part of the activities of WP3 ‘Circular Business’ (led by Prof. Janet Godsell) and work stream WP3.1 ‘Circular business model innovation’ (led by Dr Fabrizio Ceschin).