TY - JOUR A1 - Zisopoulos, Filippos K A1 - Fath, Brian D A1 - Toboso-Chavero, Susana A1 - Huang, Hao A1 - Schraven, Daan A1 - Steuer, Benjamin A1 - Stefanakis, Alexandros A1 - Clark, O Grant A1 - Scrieciu, Serban A1 - Singh, Simron A1 - Noll, Dominik A1 - de Jong, Martin UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2024.107958 VL - 212 AV - public N2 - Considering the importance of waste metals for the transition to circular economies, this study follows a bio-inspired approach to evaluate their material and monetary global trade patterns for sustainability and equity. Between 2000 and 2022, the global trade grew by 5 % in trading countries, by 37 % in trade links, by 71 % in material flows, and by 569 % in economic flows. Driven by indirect effects, the average circulation of material and monetary flows ranged between 21.8?34.9 % depending on the demand or supply perspective but showed a declining trend. Due to homogenization, high network redundancy, and low network efficiency the trade remained robust yet outside the "window of vitality" characterizing natural ecosystems. A few, mostly high-income countries dominated the market, consolidating imports of high-value metal waste mostly from low- and middle-income exporters. Policies should address circularity and trade inequities, accounting for environmental and social ramifications throughout the lifecycle of products and materials. JF - Resources, Conservation and Recycling EP - 12 KW - Resilience KW - Resource-use efficiency KW - Ecological network analysis KW - Ascendency analysis KW - Bio-inspired design KW - Waste trade ID - discovery10204989 PB - ELSEVIER N1 - © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ). TI - Inequities blocking the path to circular economies: A bio-inspired network-based approach for assessing the sustainability of the global trade of waste metals SN - 0921-3449 Y1 - 2025/01// ER -