Rebound Effects in the Use of Rare Earth Metals in ICT

Abstract

This work looks at the rebound effects associated with digitalization of the use of rare earth metals in terms of environmental sustainability with a focus on the life cycle of REE in its technological applications. There is no doubt that digitization offers numerous advantages for industry and society. These primarily include improving efficiency and performance, as well as optimizing the susceptibility to disruption of production and business processes through automation, the consistent availability of information in connection with rapid knowledge transfer. This also results in lower process costs and short reaction times to problems within the value chain. Employees can be used more flexibly due to mobile work. The most important topics of digitization include artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, cloud computing and autonomous driving. However, digitization also has environmental disadvantages. These include, above all, an increasing demand for raw materials and its cost-effective procurement in countries with low environmental and social standards instead of a sustainable circular economy, which is financially and industrially more complex for manufacturers. For this purpose, a model calculation of ICT devices in the consumer sector is carried out within the scope of this work and the resulting electronic waste is determined.