According to a relevant study ([1]), "Environmental Burden Case Study of RFID Technology in Logistics Centre", the mean weight of the metal with foil is 0.161 g per tag (see Table 2).
Let's suppose that every person on Earth (~8B) buys 1000 RFID-encoded goods per year: 0.161 * 8B * 1000 = 1.3e12 g = 1.3e9 kg = 1.3 M tonnes. In 2022, some 20M tonnes of copper has been mined ([2]), which gives us ~5% of the total copper produced. If aluminum is used, then ~2%.
Takeaways:
- yes, it could be a lot of metal, if the RFID technology gets widespread (narrator voice: it will)
- it will visibly increase demand for aluminum / copper, but it won't be the end of the world.
People really tried to make RFIDs work, but it's a poor fit for anything with metal in it (cans of beans, electronics, etc.). Sun and IBM tried to push them in 2000-s (remember that ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Fdox5_rg4 ), and it never worked in real life.
Uniqlo checkouts work because they are selling mostly, well, clothes that you can just put inside the scanner.
I think key here is that it's 100% recyclable or even reusable. The used tags could even be picked up at the exit/checkout if I understand correctly the process correctly.
FWIW, RFID tags often use aluminum.
According to a relevant study ([1]), "Environmental Burden Case Study of RFID Technology in Logistics Centre", the mean weight of the metal with foil is 0.161 g per tag (see Table 2).
Let's suppose that every person on Earth (~8B) buys 1000 RFID-encoded goods per year: 0.161 * 8B * 1000 = 1.3e12 g = 1.3e9 kg = 1.3 M tonnes. In 2022, some 20M tonnes of copper has been mined ([2]), which gives us ~5% of the total copper produced. If aluminum is used, then ~2%.
Takeaways:
- yes, it could be a lot of metal, if the RFID technology gets widespread (narrator voice: it will)
- it will visibly increase demand for aluminum / copper, but it won't be the end of the world.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9921012/
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/mining/comments/18o9ydj/all_the_met...