Suits and Boots | The Sustainable Business Podcast

Mining Indaba: Circularity and Regenerative Thinking | Transformative Force or Incremental Fix?

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This podcast discusses a deceptively simple question: 

"Is circularity really part of the solution for meeting the demand for critical materials, or is it just one piece of a much bigger puzzle?"

Silver bullet, or silver buckshot? 

Using cobalt as a case study, this podcast explores how circular approaches could reshape supply security, value chains and the role of mining itself. The discussion unpacks what’s possible, what’s missing, and what needs to change next.

Speakers include:

  • Assheton Stewart Carter | Executive Chair & Founder, TDi Sustainability
  • Susannah McLaren | Head of Responsible Sourcing & Sustainability, Cobalt Institute 
  • Tom Fairlie | Senior Manager, Sustainability & Batteries, Cobalt Institute 

This episode is part of the TDi Sustainability special series of podcasts produced for the Mining Indaba event that will take place in Cape Town between 9th – 12th February 2026. Find out more about the event>

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Hello and welcome to this special edition of Suits and Boots, the TDI sustainability podcast series in conjunction with the Investing in African Mining in Daba. In this series, speakers at the 2026 Mining in DABA event discuss some of the key themes that will be covered at the conference. I'm Ashton Stewart Carter, Executive Chair at TDI. Today we're asking a deceptively simple question. Is circularity really part of the solution for meeting the demand for critical materials? Or is it just one piece of a much bigger puzzle? Is it a silver bullet or is it silver buckshot? Using Cobalt as a case study, then we'll explore how circular approaches could reshape supply security, value chains, and the role of mining itself. I'm delighted to be joined today by Susanna McLaren and Tom Fairley from the Cobalt Institute to unpack what's possible, what's missing, and what needs to change next. Susanna uh is the lead at the Cobalt Institute's responsible sourcing and sustainability um strategy, and she brings over 20 years across different sectors, um, including in the extractors and the minerals sectors. Welcome, Susanna. And Tom Fairlie uh manages a sustainability work program at the Cobalt Institute, which focuses on the development of life cycle assessment data on cobalt products and the development of circular economy approaches and the decarbonisation of cobalt value chains. Uh, welcome to you, Tom. So we had two hugely relevant perspectives and skill sets to help us with this question. So um let's get to it. Before we get into the topic of circularity in more detail, um, Tom and Susanna, could you explain briefly what is the Cobalt Institute, who you represent, and why this topic, circularity, is a focus in your work.

Susannah McLaren:

Hi, Assheton. First of all, I want to just take the opportunity to thank you for inviting us to speak with you today on what we think is a very exciting topic, particularly in these current times. Um, but many of you may not be familiar with who we are. So the Cobalt Institute is the global industry association for cobalt producers, traders, refiners, recyclers, and users of cobalt. And say cobalt in all its uses and forms. And we promote safe, sustainable, and responsible cobalt use across the whole life cycle. And circularity has really become central to our agenda because cobalt is not only critical, but it's also infinitely recyclable. And at the Cobalt Institute, we we seek to bring a real system-wide lens, if you like, to complex issues like circularity and supply security discussions, which are grounded in data and evidence.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Thanks so much, Susannah. That's that's that's perfect. And we'll come a little bit later to hear about how circular cobalt um actually is today and what the goals are. But perhaps you can reflect, you and Tom could reflect more generally on what circularity means for minerals and metals sector today, not just cobalt, but generally, and how this definition is evolving for materials like cobalt.

Susannah McLaren:

I'd start by saying that I've been in the sort of sustainability field for over 20 years, as you mentioned in your your entry, probably too too much to think about. But what I'd say is um the concept of um circular economy now evolving to secularity has been around for for a long time. Um what I see today is its evolution into a concept that has moved really beyond the whole recycling debate. So once recycling remains um an important element of it, um, it does um um extraction, productism, use, and end-of-life recovery. And I think a good study to sign most listeners to is uh the Cobalt Institute study that we carried out a couple of years ago, but still very relevant today, um, available on our website, which is towards a circular value chain of cobalt. And this study outlines 10 solutions addressing hotspots where materials lost are underutilized, focusing on key areas, um, including cobalt extraction, use, and recycling. An important point to make here is that circularity isn't automatic, it never has been. It must be built into systems from product conception through recovery. And I'm not on that, I'm not sure, Tom, if if you if you want to bring any any other points in here.

Tom Fairlie:

I've just to say that uh thanks, Susannah. You know, the Cobalt Institute takes uh a whole value chain view, and our members cover the whole value chain, so it really places us well to to look at circularity beyond this traditional concept of just recycling, but looking at circularity at different points in the value chain, um, upstream in mining, in in the actual processing of the product, the use as well, the use stage uh when when products with consumers, for instance, and then finally um at that um end of life stage when we we go to recycling.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

That's a great um segue, Tom, into the next question I want to ask, or next questions I want to ask, and breaking down the value chain a little bit and talking about circularity. But before I do that, in your introduction, um Susanna, you pointed out that the mission of the Cobalt Institute is to promote cobalt, which is now, what did you say, responsible, sustainable, um, and safe? So secondary use cobalt and the recycling process or the circularity process more generally, can we say that that meets those um those criteria or those objectives? Is it sustainable, secure, safe?

Susannah McLaren:

I think we can't get away from the fact that just because it's it's secular doesn't necessarily mean it's responsible. So you need to um you need to work at the responsible side as well. Um so secularity, of course, is um a fundamental part of achieving sustainability. But when it comes to ensuring that it's safe and responsible, um you would need to still ensure that you're conducting um environmental and human rights due diligence, ensuring that, for instance, if it's happening in a production process, that that is is being managed responsibly. And what we see is many of the standards out there today, the sustainability standards, um, cover um you know, circularity within those standards, but also cover the responsible elements. So your due diligence not only applies to primary material, which was probably the more traditional approach or the traditional um viewpoint, but also to secondary. Right.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

So circularity and recycling as part of circularity comes with a sort of default green halo, but what you're saying here is caveat emptol. We we need to be aware and we need to validate that because there are many aspects of it which can still create risk for people and risk for corporate reputation. So, Tom, going back to your um your full value chain approach, which I I I really appreciate that because I think that's what we really need to be doing as a society. What are the um and perhaps starting right at the top of the value chain here in mining, can circularity be applied to mining? In some way it's counterintuitive because mining is sort of top of the food chain, if you want.

Tom Fairlie:

Yeah, I I I think uh circularity uh it is complementary uh to mining, but it it it it's increasingly part of mining itself. I think some high-level examples would be um waste minimization, so trying to eliminate uh waste at the mine site, think about mine tailings and the material losses uh in uh mine tailings, um, the actual equipment used for mining as well. So we know that uh in um trucks and so on, the the tires are uh a significant source of waste as well. Water is um uh another critical um uh use of uh resource and mine sites, and so reusing water uh is is very important and energy efficiency is is an essential part of circularity as well. What we know is uh demand growth is is going to continue for transition uh metals such as cobalt. Um so primary supply will remain essential um going forward in the near term, especially. And our our analysis um has shown that we expect um demand for cobalt to more than double um by 2050.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Great. So circularity at mining is at the mining phase is about waste minimization, water reuse, energy efficiency. And in some ways, this sounds like best practices at modern mining sites as a de facto norm in the industry. So is circularity here a convenient reframing? And even if it is a reframing, has this helped to enable mining companies to articulate what they are doing well within the concept of circularity, which is obviously a very popular concept today?

Tom Fairlie:

I would say in some respects, it is um, you know, definitely it's best practice and and uh it's what um companies should be doing, um, being efficient, um, minimizing waste, reusing resources where they can. But I think it's also uh about resilience as well. We know there's um great erosion happening, as there's greater extraction, um, so making um use of waste um helps counter that. Um we know that climate change is impacting access to resources such as water. So uh again, um uh reuse of water can can improve efficiency there, and greater demands on grids again um means that if we can be more energy efficient or perhaps use on-site uh renewables, uh, we can again become more resilient in the face of those challenges as well.

Susannah McLaren:

In fact, I come in here. One thing I observed from from having visited, for instance, the the the Copper Cobalt belt in um DRC is really that um clearly at the outset it wasn't a core principle because if you look around and you see the historical tailings and the huge um you know um mountains of of um mining waste, uh I would say um you know best practice has come and is emerging, but but it perhaps wasn't um originally in front of mind. Um and it's now that the mining companies are really understanding for the reasons that Tom mentioned, that there is real potential there to do something less in the first instance, but sort of more with with what there is already. Um I think a really good example is um ERG's Metal Core site, um, which is is really um re-mining of um uh tailings um and therefore shows a completely different mindset to how you you approach mining.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Right. So what I think CERT clarity does at the mine, then, listening to you two, is that it forces managers to look at these waste streams and give those waste streams value. And if they're value, they no longer become waste. So if we can get to a zero waste mine, because we've found other uses which have value for what has been uh which isn't a core part of the processing of minerals to metals, then we can um eliminate and become more circular right up at the mine. So going downstream from the mine, then, Tom, what are some of the other gaps you see technologically, economically, or systemically in the cobalt value chain? And perhaps start with giving us a few facts about how much uh cobalt is actually recycled in the global economy.

Tom Fairlie:

Yeah, thanks. Obviously, we've we've touched on the the upstream and and the potential of mine waste, um, but downstream there's there's real potential. I think um, you know, where circularity works today well with cobalt in particular, um cobalt obviously it's its main use is in electric vehicle batteries now, and that's where its main demand is. And pre-consumer uh EV battery manufacturing scrap really dominates um uh current recycled cobalt supply, um, and and will continue to do so in in the short term until uh the the fleet of electric vehicles that are on the road today finally reach um their end of life uh at volume, which hasn't quite happened yet. Um but there are some sort of missed opportunities we see as well. Um one in particular is uh is around e-waste, and um in 2022 some 34,000 tons of cobalt ended up in e-waste. Now, if all of that cobalt was um recovered, and that was about the equivalent of a third a sixth of um global mine supply that year. So a real opportunity um there um that will require um investments, policy change, and so on. Now, in the next decade or so, certainly through um 2030 onwards, as I say, the the fleet of electric vehicles on the road today are going to come to the end of life. The life of these batteries is actually longer than we uh originally anticipated. Um so the sort of eight to ten years is now more like 12 to 15 years. So this this data is moving out. Um but in this period post-2030, we're expecting a significant increase of end-of-life uh vehicle batteries with um um a cagger of some 30%. Um, so uh an explosion in the availability of of this material. The other challenge, processing uh recycled uh materials profitably requires economies of scale. You need to have a volume of material um to maintain a process, and this means, as I say, the effect of collection, trade, and processing infrastructure in place globally. There's a core economic truth that we need to explore here, and this is really that circularity um works where the value of the recovered materials um exceeds the processing costs, and so you uh you you need to have high value materials to recover, particularly when we look going back up to the the upstream and historical tailings and uh and for instance slag sites as well. Um it might not actually be economically viable to uh to recover the materials, but it also might not be environmentally um viable either, and and and there might be potential greater harm that can be uh done by trying to recover the materials rather than uh leaving them in place.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Thanks so much, Tom, for those explanations. There's two two questions which um came up for me while you were talking. Um one is kind of a little bit more conceptual, it's about uh sustainability more generally. So you said that one thing that hadn't been anticipated, perhaps, was the length of the life or the primary life of the batteries. Um, although I think Tez has always said it their batteries would last for uh 12 years. You know, from a kind of sustainable sustainability concept, um the idea would be for batteries to last longer. And when I spoke to a battery engineer a couple of years ago, they said, well, we can make a battery last as long as you like, um, but it's just going to meet more cobalt beyond the 2% that's in there already. But it won't be it'll be at a price point that the consumer isn't ready to bear just yet. Um so presumably if the cobalt price stays lower, batteries will could be made to last longer at a similar price. So there's a sort of a sustainability um commercial conundrum there. So that's kind of uh question one. I'm not sure what was the question, I guess I'm kind of pointing out. How how do we think about sustainability and circularity when we take those factors into consideration? And the second one is, you know, we talked about the different phases of the value chain and circularity. Well, you know, it is circular, and the beginning, I think, of the of the circle, if there is a beginning of a circle, is the actual design. So you talked about the economics and the materials have got to be valued, you've got to be, it's got to have high enough value for you to actually spend the effort in extracting it from a um an end-of-life product. Um, but surely that can be eased if the design is modular or it is designed to recycle, designed for circularity. How much has that been taken to account in the cobalt um in the cobalt value chain? And should the cobalt institute be working with groups, with designers, with the downstream OEMs to make sure that the design is going to facilitate circularity?

Tom Fairlie:

Thanks, Assheton. Um, great questions. I think on the um the the sort of sustain the broader sustainability question, you say there, uh I mean, if you if you go back to the Ellen MacArthur principles of circularity, keep products and materials in use is is is one of those those core pillars. And so uh yeah, an important part of circularity is that these batteries um last longer, they're quite resilient, and in fact, to the point where uh batteries are probably underutilized, um, and uh we we should be attempting to use the battery more beyond potentially the uh the the the primary vehicle uh use. So maybe we need to start looking at batteries as a service, potentially vehicle to grid, grid stabilization, um, this sort of thing. Uh at the end of the vehicle life, then there's second life applications as well. Now there are challenges around making this economically viable as well. It's not the case of simply taking the batteries out and putting them in a separate application. The battery management system needs to be changed, cooling systems need to be changed, and so this all needs to be considered, which really ties into your second question about upfront uh designing and thinking uh about circularity at that design stage, and that that is critical. But again, it come you come up with um tensions in in this design process because um are you designing a battery for its use or for its disassembly? And and and this is one of the challenges with circularity, but absolutely we should be um we should be considering how to incorporate circularity and good circular principles right up front. And I think um more broadly, thinking batteries as a service rather. than just a a battery that is owned by a consumer um is is perhaps one of the the ways forward we can start to address this with.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

That's great. Thanks so much for those reflections and insights. And I love the idea of um batteries as a service. I was in China a couple of months ago and there they're not so much recharging um batteries at the point of the consumer, but they're actually swapping them out, making it both easy for the consumer but also allowing then to allowing then for batteries to be um used in different vehicles. So Tom, we've been talking a little bit about the details of how this can happen, how we can introduce circularity into the cobalt value chain. What's your view then on how much difference this is going to make on supply of cobalt and what's the sort of timeline are we looking at so we can actually see things making a difference.

Tom Fairlie:

So I've mentioned already the importance of end-of-life vehicles for um secondary supply of cobalt certainly post-2030 and and and especially post-2035 when we see this really significant growth. Now what Cobalt Institute did it published in in late 2024 a um a report on decarbonisation pathways for cobalt and and here we looked at supply and demand scenarios uh for cobalt to help understand uh the impact of industry going through to 2050. Now secondary material is an important part in in decarbonisation because it tends to have a lower carbon footprint than primary mined material. But what we saw uh is that you know demand's going to more than double through to 2050 and and this means something in the region of 5.5 uh million tons of uh cumulative cobalt demand recycled supply could potentially by 2050 um meet up to 39% of of global demand so as you can see it it's not gonna in in the medium term or or even longer term uh replace primary supply but it's gonna become an increasingly important part of um supplying the the cobalt demand which is predominantly being driven by transition applications.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

And and Susannah i even though it won't change drastically in the short term the difference between where cobalt comes from versus primary versus secondary use in this very geopolitically tense world that we live in it still matters for many countries where they get their sourcing from so what is going to shift when not so much a globalized economy as we would like to be now there are more kind of regional um differences do you anticipate a shift in the um on where where prime production existing jurisdictions um and where things are sourced from I think I think um first of all I'm really glad that you you brought the this question up um simply because I um a lot of our discussion to date has probably taken the angle very much from um the green transition and and the energy transition but um we do live um especially you know including in the these current this this current times these current weeks we live in a very tense and geopolitical time and um probably more than many of us uh would like we're we're seeing um you know defense becoming uh a much more um important much more prominent agenda and particularly from a critical minerals viewpoint so I wouldn't say that necessarily that means we're going to have uh less mining so I think to be clear as we go into Mining Indaba as we explore you know uh the issues and opportunities and challenges facing the African continent um many of uh many countries of which are um significant um mining uh jurisdictions um I think the the the way to view it is more than rather than suddenly we'll see mining in a different country and even if we do we might not see it to the proportions that we would find on on the the continent of Africa that is is so blessed with resources. But the way to view it is really that um governments are really increasingly viewing secularity as one tool within broader supply chain strategies.

Susannah McLaren:

So um they they have appreciated um particularly um in cases where where governments haven't got a strong foothold in into certain mining countries um particularly in Africa but but not only they've appreciated the the benefits of tapping into what might have been an a slightly um uh a secondary resource and really to literally in terms of they may have really viewed it as sort of uh previously as as very much from an environmental viewpoint you know of um recycling um secularity those are nice things to have that form um that fall firmly under the environmental or sustainability agenda but actually that secularity that discourse is changing and uh we're no longer or governments are no longer viewing it only as an environmental issue it's now part of how they're thinking about resilience about how they're um but they're also relying on on on primary supply um thanks Suzanne and you know without wanting to introduce a new concept um we do talk quite often in our circles and sustainability corporate sustainability circles about regenerative business um and regenerative business means um in well one view of regenerative business it means looking outside of your kind of traditional boundaries whether that's up and down the value chain or spatially outside of your the boundaries of your your site can we talk a little bit about that um and uh you know what it would take for mining to become more regenerative or more circular at the site have we got some examples of where mining companies and other metals companies are doing it and I I was actually taken by Tom's idea of the um you know batteries as a service you know mining as a service should the should we be calling these metals companies rather than mining companies I think the the first point to make is is uh regenerative mining doesn't uh necessarily mean less mining um and you know we we're looking in the context of um ore grade decline so there's uh you know increasing energy intensity greater mine waste but also in the in the uh the the the the mining stage there's there's an opportunity for regenerative activities and a good example um one of our members electra uh did was in entering a region um actually the the the town cobalt in Ontario um where there'd been historically poorly managed uh mine waste and here they worked with local indigenous peoples they they mapped the biodiversity uh and toxicology of the local ecosystem and and really this was to enable traditional knowledge and materials and natural stewardship to build um economic opportunities uh with a foraging based business but more fundamentally to preserve indigenous culture by allowing safe foraging of um medicinal and um culinary plants um mushrooms fish in the region as well a really good example of working with communities with people who have the best knowledge uh to help regenerate a site thanks so much Tom and Susannah and sadly I think we're going to have to bring this um conversation to a close and we've had a great conversation and you know what I think we've learnt is that we when we talk about circularity we need to look at all phases of the in this case cobalt um cobalt value chain that it's going that's right from the mine and we had a great conversation and we just heard Tom there talking about more ideas about how mines become more regenerative and more circular and this is going to take a change of mindset.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

We've got to get out of our comfort zone break through some barriers and boundaries and start to um coordinate we've learned that circularity doesn't mean there's going to be less mining the demand is still very high we're still going to need primary extraction um but that the that the proportion of recycled could reach up to uh 40% um 39% of the increased demand which by 2050 we perceive is going to or we anticipate is going to um is going to triple but the message I think we heard from our speakers is that the idea of circularity is not just one about green transition but it's about supply chain resiliency especially in a more fractured geopolitical uh geopolitical world and it's not the silver bullet but it is one pellet of silver buckshot thank you once again to our speakers Susannah McLaren and Tom Fairlie from the Cobalt Institute for joining us today. To our listeners please check out the rest of this special series of Mining Indaba podcasts on the TDI Suits and Boots podcast channel. I look forward to seeing you at the event in February where you can hear more from today's speakers. I'm Assheton Stewart Carter and thank you for listening