Circularity in mining still tops GMG agenda
- 3 April 2025
Lead authors of the Global Mining Guidelines Group’s seminal 2024 circularity white paper have moved to keep the discussion about circularity front of mind for the group’s constituency at a time of significant distractions for leaders in many industries.
Laura Mottola and Caroline Provost co-wrote the GMG’s ‘State of Play of Circularity in the Mining and Metals Industry’ report with Katherine van Nes, Paulina Contreras and Felipe Soto. They interviewed and/or researched public reports of 18 miners and 10 manufacturers and suppliers of equipment to the industry to produce the report, which presented the state of play on circularity and GMG’s call to action.
GMG has about 150 members, including leading mining companies and suppliers to the mining and metals sectors.
Mottola, GMG’s regional co-representative for Latin America, and senior advisor, Provost, have used a refresher webinar to repeat the group’s call to action and “bring GMG constituents around the world together to do some meaningful projects”.
“We have been living in a world since the dawn of industrialisation of … take, make and dispose,” Mottola said on the webcast.
“Very linear systems have been developed and our whole economy and society is built around that. But we have all realised – well hopefully a good portion; maybe not all – this has brought us many, many issues at a planetary level. Hence the interest in the shift to circular business models and ways of doing business.
“Personally I’m very passionate about making the mining and metals business more circular, ideally by design. But there is a lot that needs to be done.”
Mottola said the GMG report highlighted project-level thinking on circularity in many organisations and a “common sense of frustration” in the companies assessed about prioritising circularity and embedding it in organisational thinking.
“The result is that potentially more sophisticated, more systemic and powerful circular opportunities have been left on the backburner,” she said. “And that’s also tied to the difficulty in generating clear financial business cases that you can attach [a suitable] return on investment and you can fund those projects internally.
“Lately though I have had some conversations with people who seem to suggest that we are moving towards more systemic types of projects.”
Mottola said the GMG aimed to be instrumental in building network and multi-stakeholder approaches to circularity, leveraging the group’s membership base, and breaking down circularity language and other barriers to faster collaboration.
“There has been a lot of work that’s been happening and lately has been advancing, particularly from the ICMM [International Council on Mining and Metals] and ISO [International Organization for Standardization],” she said. “But I think that’s also where GMG can provide a great funnel for those consensus-based guidelines that GMG is so good at producing.”
At a time when, as US investment bank Morgan Stanley said last week, new geopolitical stances, tariff actions and policy turbulence had created a global financial and economic backdrop that was “at best unstable and at worst unforecastable”, Mottola said industry circularity drivers remained as pressing as ever.
Stakeholder expectations were rising – “society is asking more for it” – and the need to anticipate and mitigate future regulatory and other risks was evident, she said. Circularity as a business success enabler was increasingly recognised. Companies and governments could see circular opportunities to extract more value and generate new revenue streams from finite resources, with less waste and improved efficiency.
“We already know we can’t supply the amount of materials needed for the energy transition simply with mining and metals from fresh virgin material,” Provost said.
“Circularity can help fill the gap between supply and demand in a lot of these metals and materials.”
