EU decision-makers don’t have to look far to find cheap critical raw materials: Just 5 kilometers away from the EU quarter, car dealers up and down Heyvaert Street are scooping them up and shipping them to Africa.
Dealerships in this industrial precinct in southwest Brussels send European used vehicles — many too polluting to be allowed on the continent’s roads — to African countries like Senegal, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, where the market for Europe’s unwanted automobiles is thriving
One day these cars will end up in junkyards far away, and with them tons of valuable metals that the EU could recycle and reuse to run its economy.
*But Europe’s age-old habit of exporting unwanted goods is coming back to bite it as the bloc looks to recycle its way out of its reliance on raw materials imported from China. *
The EU is scrambling to secure new sources of critical metals and minerals necessary for clean energy and military technology — a task of increasing urgency as geopolitical tensions disrupt traditional supply chains.
For a small continent like Europe that is poor in natural resources but rich in consumer goods, old cars are a promising source of these materials.