Materials circularity in context

Materials researchers are trained to innovate and create. But now that it is clear the world has too much stuff, what is the path forward?

Additives are essential to the diverse use of plastics, yet pose risks to health and recycling quality. Collaboration across supply chains, disclosure of composition and risks, and improved additive design can enable more sustainable plastics.

The construction industry consumes more than 40% of Earth’s raw material resources. It is time to rethink not just what we build, but how we value what is already built. Digital materials passports can help us to reuse and repurpose materials in the built environment, driving a shift towards a circular construction industry.

Ongoing plastics losses to marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems continue to exacerbate the global environmental crisis. Variations in data, methods and assumptions across studies have led to inconsistent estimates of plastics losses and their ecological impacts. These estimates must now be improved to develop and deliver effective interventions.

Waste management has transformed over the past half a century, from key dumping and landfilling laws in the 1970s to today’s complex policies targeting plastic waste reduction and recycling. Still, global disparities are glaring, and stronger policies, infrastructure and technology are necessary to achieve a truly circular plastics economy.

Wooden bioresources are key materials for the transition to a circular bioeconomy, yet widespread adoption, for example in construction, still lags. Growth is stalled by policy gaps, resource debates and limited public confidence. A blueprint for global initiatives can help realize the full potential of bio-based materials.

The transformation of municipal sludge into high-entropy single-atom catalysts offers not just a new materials synthesis route, but a new framework for how we conceive of waste, resource recovery and circularity.

Lithium-ion batteries suffer from complicated degradation behaviours, posing challenges for recycling. This Review explores the failure mechanisms in state-of-the-art cathode materials from the particle to the cell scale and discusses how these insights can help to improve material extraction and direct regeneration to optimize recycling processes.

Current lithium-ion battery recycling extracts valuable metals while discarding much of the battery’s leftover value. An emerging strategy called direct battery regeneration upends this model, restoring the battery’s performance without taking it apart — presenting a more efficient, sustainable option for end-of-life batteries.

The rapid expansion of wind farms has led to a growing challenge: the escalating accumulation of decommissioned wind turbine blades in landfills. Addressing this issue through innovative recycling and reuse strategies is pivotal to advancing a circular economy within the wind energy sector.

Fibre-reinforced polymers are widely used — and waste is growing fast. Appropriate recycling technologies should be purposefully selected to reintegrate fibre-reinforced polymer waste into sustainable industries, yield high-quality industrial products and promote the broader recycling of fibre-reinforced polymers.

Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs), an emerging type of sustainable battery, still need to be recycled for environmental and economic reasons. Strategies to recycle spent SIBs should be made during the initial stages of commercialization to ensure that SIBs are designed for ease of recycling, efficiency and low operation costs. This Perspective article summarizes the material components of SIBs, discusses strategies for their recycling and outlines the associated challenges and future outlook of SIB recycling.