#recycling economy
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Underscoring the importance of transitioning from informality to formality within the green economy in Turkey.
The Officials of ILO Office for Türkiye, embarked on a series of pivotal engagements with waste pickers through several meetings, technical advisory support, and a training aiming to promote formality, safety, and inclusivity within the green economy sector.
A visit was started by a courtesy visit to Mr. Ali Çeltek, Secretary General of the United Metal Workers’ Union, who graciously offered their meeting hall for the training. Meanwhile, the discussions with the General President of the Union focused on upcoming engagements, fostering cooperation between the stakeholders. Additionally, discussions with Ms. Nuran Gülenç from the Equality Department centered on women's empowerment, child labour, Persons with Disabilities (PwDs), and refugee inclusion, highlighting the ILO's commitment to social and solidarity economy principles.
A meeting with the members of The Association of Recycling Workers who are also founding members of KATIK Cooperative was conducted with the participation of Ms. Zelal Yalçın from Istanbul Planning Agency. The meeting addressed the Cooperative’s establishment process, highlighting ongoing efforts to formalize waste picking activities, transition from informality to formality within the green economy and complimentary support interventions based on the feasibility report and business plan prepared by Mr. Serkan Öngel from Gaziantep University.
The ILO Office for Türkiye has been providing technical and financial support to enable transition to formality of the informal waste pickers in Istanbul, focusing on the Ataşehir, Ümraniye, Kadıköy, and Beykoz districts. The efforts are initially aiming to support the waste pickers willing to establish a cooperative to enhance their working conditions and formalize the waste picking. The ILO aims to build resilience and strengthen social cohesion among the refugee and host communities through the promotion of decent work and sustainable livelihood opportunities and by investing in a skilled and competent labour supply, stimulating job creation and business development, job retention, strengthening labour market governance institutions and enforcement. Through ILO’s technical and financial support, KATIK Cooperative will provide formal job opportunities for 10 people in the first place, in total 30 members, from host community and Syrians under Temporary Protection in İstanbul.
Through an interactive training session, the participants were briefed on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) terminology and sector-specific examples, emphasizing techniques to prevent fundamental abnormalities and diseases, crucial for waste pickers’ safety along with the providing information on personal protective equipment (PPE) by Ms. Nefise Burcu Ünal, OSH consultant.
In line with this year's theme “World Day for Safety and Health at Work” which will focus on exploring the impacts of climate change on occupational safety and health, the trainings that are carried out are focused on occupational safety and health, especially in the changing climate and the new economic ecosystem it creates. The trainings aimed to increase awareness of occupational safety and health legal framework, ILO’s standards and rights as fundamental labour and human rights and also to support social dialogue on occupational safety and health and to create a positive occupational safety and health culture.
Considering that cooperatives are pathways to transition informal economy workers, including waste pickers, to the formal economy by strengthening their collective voice and representation, securing jobs and incomes, and facilitating access to basic services and social protection, this OSH training provided an opportunity to leverage their knowledge in rights and obligations, including obligations within the tripartite structure while promoting decent work opportunities by guaranteeing the implementation of human rights to access to occupational safety and health in the world of work.
In conclusion, the engagements underscored the importance of transitioning from informality to formality within the green economy, promoting occupational safety and health, and fostering cooperation among stakeholders for a just transition.
#ilo arab states#OSH training#recycling economy#turkey#waste pickers#formal economies#informal economy workers#green economy
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A Canadian government plan to track plastics could help put more money into consumers' pockets and keep plastic waste out of landfills.
The government announced Tuesday it's seeking input on a new national plastics registry. Experts say it could create a lucrative system that encourages companies to salvage waste plastic and reimburse Canadians and retailers for dropping off scraps.
"Plastic waste is a commodity like anything else," said Calvin Lakhan, a research scientist at York University's faculty of environmental and urban change. "Right now, we're not doing a very good job of recycling our plastics."
The registry would track various plastic items produced in Canada. Everything from food and beverage containers to household appliances, clothing, tires and fishing equipment could fall under its scope. Government documents say the reporting requirements likely would apply to plastic producers, not consumers.
Continue Reading
Tagging @politicsofcanada
#cdnpoli#canada#canadian politics#canadian news#plastic#plastic recycling#plastic waste#zero waste#circular economy
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[In February, 2023], a small warehouse in the English city of Nottingham received the crucial final components for a project that leverages the power of used EV batteries to create a new kind of circular economy.
Inside, city authorities have installed 40 two-way electric vehicle chargers that are connected to solar panels and a pioneering battery energy storage system, which will together power a number of on-site facilities and a fleet of 200 municipal vehicles while simultaneously helping to decarbonize the UK’s electrical grid.
Each day Nottingham will send a combination of solar-generated energy — and whatever is left in the vehicles after the day’s use — from its storage devices into the national grid. The so-called “vehicle to grid” chargers deliver this energy just when it’s needed most, during peak evening demand, when people are home cooking, using hot water or watching TV. Later, the same chargers pull energy from the grid to recharge the vehicles in the wee hours of the night, when folks are sleeping and electricity is cheaper and plentiful.
“We are trying to create a virtual power station,” says Steve Cornes, Nottingham City Council’s Technical Lead. “The solar power and battery storage will help us operate independently and outside of peak times, making our system more resilient and reducing stress on the national grid. We could even make a profit.” ...
After around a decade, an EV battery no longer provides sufficient performance for car journeys. However, they still can retain up to 80 percent of their original capacity, and with this great remaining power comes great reusability.
“As the batteries degrade, they lose their usefulness for vehicles,” says Matthew Lumsden, chairman of Connected Energy. “But batteries can be used for so many other things, and to not do so results in waste and more mining of natural resources.”
The E-STOR hubs come in the form of 20-foot modular containers, each one packed with 24 repurposed EV batteries from Renault cars. Each hub can provide up to 300kW of power, enough to provide energy to dozens of homes. One study by Lancaster University, commissioned by Connected Energy, calculated that a second life battery system saved 450 tons of CO2 per MWh over its lifetime...
Battery repurposing and recycling is set to play a massive role over the coming years as the automobile industry attempts to decarbonize and the world more broadly attempts to fight waste. The production of EVs, which use lithium-ion batteries, is accelerating. Tesla, for example, is aiming to sell 20 million EVs per year by 2030 — more than 13 times the current level. In turn, 12 million tons of EV batteries could become available for reuse by 2030, according to one estimate.
“Over the next decade we are going to see this gigantic wave,” says Jessica Dunn, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Companies are recognizing this is a necessary industry. They need to ramp up infrastructure for recycling and reuse.”
-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, March 13, 2023
#ev#ev charger#electric vehicle#electric cars#batteries#battery recycling#lithium ion battery#auto industry#sustainability#circular economy#recycling#reuse#uk#nottingham#england#good news#hope
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The hair that drops in clumps on the floors of some salons in Kiel, a port city in northern Germany, is swept up to be turned into fabrics that filter oil from water. Parents who want to buy their children cloth nappies instead of disposable ones can apply for grants of up to €200 from the local authorities. At the city’s biggest festival last year, the organisers got rid of single-use cutlery and replaced it with a deposit system.
Germany is famed as a world leader in recycling – and Kiel, as I found out during a visit this summer, has some of the most weird and workable plans in the country to deal with its trash. It is the first German city to be declared “zero waste” by the environmental campaign group Zero Waste Europe. The certificate does not mean it has already stopped throwing things away – far from it – but rather that it has a concrete plan for how to do better.
“It’s one step in the right direction,” says Bettina Aust – a Green party politician who was elected president of Kiel city council in June – over a glass of juice made from apples that had been saved from landing in a supermarket bin. “You have to keep thinking further … You cannot stay still.”
Germany has a complicated relationship with waste. Despite its status as a world leader in recycling, Europe’s biggest economy is also one of its dirtiest. In 2021, the average German generated 646kg of waste, while the average EU citizen generated 530kg. Only in four EU countries – Austria, Luxembourg, Denmark and Belgium – did people throw away more.
Dino Klösen, a manager at Kiel’s waste management company ABK, says trends in the country’s consumption can be seen in its bins. Paper recycling bins that would have once been full of newspapers are now bursting with cardboard from delivery packages. “The weight of paper waste has dropped but the volume keeps rising from online shopping,” he says.
Awash with waste, cities like Kiel are exploring ways to throw away less and recycle more of what it does chuck. The city council has announced projects ranging from a ban on single-use items in public institutions, to installing more public drinking fountains, to teaching schoolchildren about waste. It is also encouraging people to make simple changes to their behaviour such as using solid bars of soap instead of buying plastic bottles of the stuff.
Other proposals are more systemic. The city is trialling a “pay as you throw” system where people are charged only for the rubbish they throw in the mixed waste bin. A report from the European Environment Agency last year found only about 30% of Germany is covered by such a scheme, even though areas that were covered saw an average drop in mixed waste of 25%.
“General waste is the most expensive form of rubbish there is,” says Klösen. “We are trying to motivate citizens to throw less waste in the bin by making them pay less for doing so.”
Even though waste-cutting efforts like Kiel’s are fairly novel in Germany, recycling is firmly rooted in the culture. In 2021, Germans collected more than two-thirds of their municipal solid waste to be repurposed – more than any other country in Europe. They burned most of the rest for energy, and dumped just 1% in landfills (the EU average is 16%).
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Local second hand online!
Sometimes I forget that Craigslist exists. Sometimes I forget that there’s an already established market of local people just trying to get rid of stuff to other people who want it.
I have a few items on my mind that I’m just casually looking around for at the moment and I can’t believe there are times where I literally forget that Craigslist exists.
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ok i heard watcher has put up an update and i basically got the tldr from literally everyone. im so so glad they responded and took the feedback and criticism people have given!!! as much as i was complaining about the whole thing, i DO want to support them but it just wasn't feasible long-term (paying 5.99usd/mo for what seems to be just 4 videos).
now that it's been addressed, im more likely to subscribe on their website when/if im able JUST to support them cause honestly i could wait a month for the free yt release but i actually do want to support them and help them succeed!!!
#watcher entertainment#like i really just wanna support them#specially with andrew and adam now on board too#the initial video just wasnt it#like it really put me off#if u had the ability to support them anyway what makes this different?? u might ask#it's that i feel like i actually HAVE a choice to support them#whereas the initial decision felt like well transfer and pay us on the other website or bye forever#this recent decision feels like well if ur able to support us thanks! but if u cant see u in a month anyway!!#like does that make sense???? idk#idkkk i just want silly goofy videos of ghost and food#like it doesnt even have to be high tv quality with cinematography#give me shot on a iphone!!! give recycled digital cameras with shitty qualities!!! give me food that looks expensive but isnt actually!!#like specially in this economy!!! expensive food will never be preferred by the common mass!! id rather watch meals that i can afford
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EU secured agreement to stop sending waste to countries incapable of recycling it
EU member states and lawmakers have reviewed bloc’s rules on transporting waste and halting exports of certain types of waste to third countries that cannot properly treat it, Reuters reports.
“Exports of certain non-hazardous wastes and mixtures of non-hazardous wastes (…) will be allowed only to those non-OECD countries that consent and fulfil the criteria to treat such waste in an environmentally sound manner.”
The Parliament added that respect for international workers’ rights would also be taken into account. The European Commission proposed in 2021 to overhaul EU rules on waste disposal to make it harder for member states to offload rubbish to more impoverished countries.
The EU will finally assume responsibility for its plastic waste by banning its export to non-OECD countries.
EU countries must stop sending plastic waste to poorer countries within two and a half years after legislation comes into force, parliament has said.
Read more HERE
#world news#world politics#news#europe#european news#european union#eu politics#eu news#eu foreign policy#eu law#eu economy#waste management#waste removal#recycling#oecd
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you know that emotion that collectors feel when they sort through their chosen collection of Precious Things, a kind of pleased "yesssssssss"?
so i love clothes, and i hate getting rid of them because inevitably like 6 or 10 years later i want to wear That One Specific Garment and no other will POSSIBLY do (and also because the Gender Vibe changes every day #GenderfluidProblems)
but i only have so much closet space and like. money. so i'm setting up a little resell shop and FUCK ME but taking nice little pics and writing up little descriptions feels an awful lot like that collector thing of pawing through your Cool Shit and feeling immensely satisfied, which means i fall in love with the garment again and i don't want to sell it!!!
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THE RESPONSIBLE THING UNDER THESE CONDITIONS
EDIT: here's my depop link ❤
#anyway i have a fair amount of goth whimsigoth romantic and hanfu to recycle into the fashion economy#link will be shared once i convince myself to publish any listings omggg#hound barks
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geology/mining + 3 and 10? 👀
3: Screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr
This person commented after I said Canada, the US, and Europe should increase mining to minimize Cobalt extraction in Africa. Definitely the worst take I've seen in a hot minute (maybe this person was confused? lol) I think they were trying to say that recycling is more affordable than mining in the US, but they're just... wrong.
Europe has lots of operating mines, and just googling "cobalt mining Europe" will get you a paper identifying 104 potential deposits. They are in NO WAY mined out. But they're in pretty developed areas, which was why I posted we need to defeat "not in my backyard-ism".
Lithium is currently mined. And you wouldn't mine it in Europe, even in brines, because it's not the right climate.
"Including the labor safety practices make the stuff not exactly affordable". HUMAN SAFETY AND DIGNITY IS NOT DETERMINED BY A DOLLAR SIGN?!
Of course mining isn't environmentally friendly when done by cartels in recovering colonial countries that don't have the resources or governmental power to enforce safety and environmental standards. /stares at the camera.
And recycling gets its own paragraph because ^ sans this post, the most dangerous/misunderstood commentary I usually see online and offline is on recycling. Recycling is metallurgy++. Unlike mineral processing, which deals with limited inorganic chemistry, (usually), recycling sorts through a wide range of organics and inorganics, trying to get back to what the earth provided in an ore deposit. Alloys, like Mo, As, Sb, Bi, Te, don't play nice when you're recycling metals because they're in such small grades in steel. Minerals/rocks, like sand and gravels, hematite, kaolinite, and borates, just... aren't recyclable due to where they end up. Hematite is used in makeup. Kaolinite is used for ceramics and refractories; plus the clay crystal structure is changed once you fire it. Borate is used in cleaning products and cosmetics.
The order of magnitude to mass-separate these sort of things, along with all the plastics and synthesized chemicals in our world now, make recycling expensive and sometimes technologically impossible with current tools. So even though recycling is great and we SHOULD be recycling, the reality of the chemistry has been blown out of proportion. (((I have lots of opinions about how we can create a cyclical sustainable economy but those are not in the scope of this ask game. 😂)))
TLDR: Europe is not mined out. Recycling cannot provide everything we need in our daily lives now. We should mine where it's more expensive to mine because people are dying in other countries and we are not going to stop mining anytime soon.
10. worst part of fanon
No worst part of geology fanon on tumblr!!!! I love everyone here!!! Everyone makes such good memes. The fact someone else independently came up with Edward Cullen dropping acid on limestone and saying "effervescent" is proof of that. ♥
#thank you for giving me the opportunity to get up on my soapbox lmao~#I have a lot of hypotheses about how we can make a more circular economy and part of me going into metallurgy is to make them reality tbh#ask game#mining#recycling#I STILL get the giggles over how confidently they proclaimed Europe is mined out.
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We've been hand making button badges in the UK for almost 20 years & we send our badges all over the world. Thousands of designs to choose from.
Check out Kool Badges online
#recycle#badges#buttons#badge#pins#button#recycling#sustainability#ecofriendly#sustainable#circular economy#zero waste#composting
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“A new textile recycling plant opened by the company Renewcell in the small coastal city of Sundsvall, Sweden, is so big that employees use bikes to get from one end of the production line to the other.
Large bales of cotton waste are dumped on conveyor belts, shredded, and then broken down into a wet slurry, with the help of chemicals. That slurry, known as dissolving pulp, is then bleached, dried, stamped into sheets of what looks like recycled craft paper, given the brand name Circulose, and shipped off to manufacturers to be made into textiles like viscose for clothes.
Up until now, most clothes marketed as made from recycled materials only contained a small percentage of recycled cotton or were made from water bottles, fishing nets and old carpets. (Technology exists to recycle polyester into polyester but is prohibitively expensive and rarely used.)
Renewcell’s factory is one of the first steps toward a system that turns old clothes into new high-quality clothes made entirely with recycled fabric. It also helps to address the mountains of textile waste accumulating worldwide and may help reduce the number of trees that are harvested from ecologically sensitive forests to produce fabrics for fashion. (More than 200 million trees are cut down every year to produce dissolving pulp for man-made cellulosic fabrics, including rayon, viscose, modal, and lyocell, according to Canopy, a Canadian nonprofit that works with the paper and fashion industries to reduce deforestation.)
About a half-dozen start-ups around the world are aimed at commercial textile recycling, and Renewcell is the first to open.
Many consumers seem to be increasingly uneasy about what happens to their old clothes, and fashion companies are searching for ways to continue expanding while simultaneously fulfilling promises to reduce their negative environmental impact and achieve a circular system in which clothes are looped back through instead of being sent to a landfill. The European Union has mandated expanded textile collection for all member states by 2025, which is expected to significantly increase the flow of fashion waste in need of a destination.
“It’s exciting,” Ashley Holding, a sustainable textile consultant and founder of Circuvate, said of the factory’s opening. “It’s great to see them get to such a stage...”
The company produced enough recycled fabric for a dress in 2014 and built a demonstration plant in 2017. It attracted the interest of brands like Stella McCartney, which funded a life cycle analysis showing Circulose had the lowest climate impact of 10 different synthetic cellulosic fibers. H&M became a minority shareholder in the company in 2017.
The company went public and was listed in Sweden on the Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market in 2020. H&M, Levi Strauss and Bestseller, an international clothing chain based in Denmark, have committed to incorporating Circulose into their clothes. (In 2021, Levi’s debuted a capsule collection of jeans that were 16 percent Circulose.)” -via The New York Times, 11/30/22
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youtube
Your plastic waste might be traded by criminals (DW Planet A)
#Youtube#wasteless crafts#video#video essay#deutsche welle#dw planet a#german broadcasting#plastic#waste#plastic waste#recycling#politics#economy#capitalism#trash#global warming#climate change#climate crisis
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Called Infinna, the fibre is already being used by global brands including Patagonia, H&M and Inditex, which owns Zara. "It's a premium quality textile fibre, which looks and feels natural - like cotton," says Mr Alava, rubbing his own navy blue tee between his fingers. "And it is solving a major waste problem."
Around the world, an estimated 92 million tonnes of textiles waste is created each year, according to non-profit Global Fashion Agenda, and this figure is set to rise to more than 134 million tonnes by 2030, if clothing production continues along its current track.
To the untrained eye, samples of Infinited Fiber's recycled fibre resemble lambswool; soft, fluffy and cream coloured. Mr Alava explains that the product is produced through a complex, multi-step process which starts with shredding old textiles and removing synthetic materials and dyes, and ends with a new fibre, regenerated from extracted cellulose.
This finished fibre can then simply "hop into the traditional production processes" used by High Street brands, replacing cotton and synthetic fibres, to produce everything from shirts and dresses to denim jeans.
Much of the science involved in making the fibre has been around since the 1980s, says Mr Alava, but rapid technological advancements in the last few years have finally made large-scale production a more realistic possibility.
In parallel, he believes High Street brands have become more focused on "really honestly looking for changing their material usage", while millennial and Gen Z consumers are increasingly concerned about shopping sustainably. "They are different animals, different consumers, to people my age," he laughs.
The company has already attracted so much interest in its technology that it recently announced it was investing €400m (£345m; $400m) to build its first commercial-scale factory at a disused paper mill in Lapland.
The goal is to produce 30,000 tonnes of fibre a year once it's operating at full capacity in 2025. That is equivalent to the fibre needed for approximately 100 million T-shirts.
"I think the impact could be quite big, if you think about the whole textile system, what exists currently and how much textile waste that we have," argues Kirsi Niinimäki, an associate professor in fashion research at Aalto University, a few blocks away from Infinited Fiber's headquarters.
"It's a really good example of actually how we can 'close the loop'… really begin to move to a circular economy."
Infinited Fiber's growth is tied into a wider vision in Finland, which wants to become Europe's leading circular economy, with a focus on reusing and saving resources. In 2016, it became the first government in the world to create a national road map designed to help reach its goal.
Several other Finnish start-ups are looking at ways to produce new textile fibres on a big scale, while also cutting down on harmful emissions and chemicals. These include Spinnova which, from its textiles factory in Jyväskylä, central Finland, transforms cellulose from raw wood pulp into ready-to-spin fibres.
Spinnova's yarn is attracting plenty of global attention and has so far been used by brands including upmarket Finnish clothing label Marimekko, and outdoor wear firms North Face, Bergans and Adidas, which recently used it in a limited edition midlayer hoodie designed for hikers.
Elsewhere in Europe, there are a range of other companies developing technologies to create more circular yarns, including Swedish startup Renewcell, and Bright.fiber Textiles, which plans to open its first factory in the Netherlands in 2023.
But experts say there are a range of challenges facing these new fibre brands as they plot their expansions.
Ms Niinimäki underlines that the clothing manufacturing sector has, until recently, been slower than many other industries when it comes to embracing sustainability, which could set the tone for a slower transformation than companies like Spinnova and Infinited Fiber hope.
"It has been so easy to produce the way that we have been producing, and just to move towards more effective industrial manufacturing on an increasingly bigger scale," she says.
"There hasn't been a big pressure to change the already existing system." However, she is hopeful that, in the European Union at least, new rules aimed at ensuring clothing manufacturers focus on more sustainable and durable products will speed up "a change in mindsets".
Another issue is whether clothing brands will be able to pass on the additional costs of their new high-tech production techniques on to consumers, especially at a time when the cost of living is spiralling globally.
Adidas' latest limited edition hoodie produced with Spinnova fabric costs €160 (£137; $160) to buy online in Finland, at least €40 more than most of its other technical hoodies.
"Fashion is a complicated area, because even if people are saying that they are environmentally aware, they don't always act rationally," says Ms Niinimäki. "There's also this kind of emotional side when you talk about fashion consumption, and of course, the price is also linked to that."
While both Infinited Fiber and Spinnova insist their business plans look holistically at all aspects of production - for example using renewable technologies to power their factories - climate campaigners argue it is still too early to accurately estimate the net effect of these new techniques on carbon emissions.
"Pulp and other alternative fibres can provide diversity for sourcing textile materials and therefore lessen the burden caused by production of more traditional textile raw materials such as cotton," says Mai Suominen, a leading forest expert for WWF. "However it depends on the use of energy, all the processes they use and how they use waste materials."
Most importantly, she argues, simply slotting more sustainable fibres into the multibillion dollar fashion industry won't be enough to combat climate change, if we keep making and buying clothes at the current rate.
There is no sustainable development unless the overall natural resource consumption is radically decreased to a level that fits within planetary boundaries," she argues.
But within the Finnish fibres industry there is a sense of boomtown optimism that the increased use of recycled or reimagined fibres could be an important part of the jigsaw in the battle to limit climate change.
"The fast-fashion companies who have been kind of creating certain parts of the problem are highly interested in new technologies," says Infinited Fibers chief executive Petri Alva. He believes that if investment continues, the recycled fibres could become mainstream within ten to 15 years.
#textiles#fashion#fashion industry#sustainable fashion#recycled textiles#closed loop economy#artificial fibres
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Megmondom őszintén, nem vagyok valami nagy “klíma-szorongó”. Ezzel együtt persze tájékozódom folyamatosan, és igyekszem a legfenntarthatóbb módon élni az életem. A szemetelést sosem tűrtem (többször szemetet is szedtem), illetve a pazarlás rosszaságára is hamar rájöttem.
Aki ismert a világháborúban (vagy a büdös komcsik első évtizedeiben) élt embereket, pl. nagyszülőket, azok általában az étellel pazarlást sem nagyon szeretik. Nyilván a “nincsből” fakad minden falat megbecsülése. Nem kell hozzá kivételes logika, hogy rájöjjünk.
Az étellel nem pazarlásra már sokan sok mindennel próbálkoztak (pl. éttermekben kisebb tányérok, különböző mobil app-ok, amiken keresztül éttermeknél a zárás közeli órákban olcsóbban lehet főtt ételhez jutni, stb-stb.), de amit ezen a képen látok az szerintem nagyon jó és vélhetően/remélhetően hasznos is.
Mert az érzelmekre hat.
Nem kell mohónak lenni. Szedj keveset, az is elég, hidd el!
A kövér/túlsúlyos ember beteg. Bármit is mond a “body positivity”!
Illetve - ha kicsit elmélkedünk rajta, rájöhetünk - minden vallás alaptételei népi megfigyeléseken (lelki és gyakorlati síkon is) alapulnak. Ilyen a bibliai 7 főbűn is. Ezek között, hétből kettő(!) is ide kapcsolódik: kapzsiság, falánkság.
Szóval szerintem ésszel, és jó szívvel cselekedjünk! 🙏
(Tipp: ha van otthon ételmaradékod, add az utcán egy hajléktalannak, mielőtt megromlana.)
#pazarlás#étel#evés#foodphotography#foodporn#food mention#foodgasm#food#foodpics#feed me#recycling#economy#ecofriendly
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Impact of Construction and Demolition Waste and its Use in Buildings
Introduction
Construction and demolition (C&D) waste is a significant environmental concern worldwide. The massive amounts of waste generated from construction and demolition activities pose a threat to the environment and human health. However, innovative approaches have emerged to tackle this issue, focusing on recycling and reusing C&D waste in building projects. This article explores the…
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#building construction#C&D waste#carbon footprint#circular economy#Construction and demolition waste#construction industry#environmental challenges#environmental impact#green building#green building certifications#landfill reduction#quality control#recycled materials#recycling#resource conservation#resource efficiency#reuse#standardized regulations#sustainable practices#sustainable waste management#technical limitations#waste management
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Recycling: Raw materials from urban mines are becoming increasingly important
Vast amounts of steel, copper and numerous other metals are built into everyday objects - and after their original use they are an important source of raw materials.
When the smartphone has had its day, it often ends up in a drawer - "one can always use it again". According to the Bitkom[1] digital association[2], around 210 million old cell phones were stored in households in Germany last year. 87 percent of the citizens had at least one discarded mobile phone. That number has more than doubled since 2015.
The drawer cell phones belong to the so-called urban mine. In contrast to the classic raw material mine, it describes the man-made raw material deposits: "All goods that we humans have ever created," explains Britta Bookhagen from the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR)[3]. These so-called anthropogenic stock or urban mines[4] include bridges, cars, houses, washing machines - and also smartphones. Gold, copper and nickel can be extracted from mobile phones, for example, and steel in particular from cars and bridges.
When strategically considering the urban mine, it is initially irrelevant "whether the goods are still being actively used and will only be released in the foreseeable future or whether they have already reached the end of their useful life," writes the Federal Environment Agency (UBA)[5] on its website. Metals and construction minerals in particular often remain in infrastructure, buildings and everyday goods for a long time. "Over the decades, enormous stocks of material have accumulated in this way, which hold great potential as a future source of secondary raw materials."
Large dependence on import
According to the UBA, the German economy uses around 1.3 billion tons of materials domestically every year - this includes products such as cars as well as pure raw materials. The Federal Republic of Germany is heavily dependent on imports, especially for metal and energy raw materials, as can be seen from the latest BGR raw materials annual report from December[6]. Especially when it comes to newly mined metals, Germany is almost completely dependent on imports.
But: the raw materials in the world are finite, international competition is growing, costs are rising - as is the pressure on natural areas and their ecosystems. The recycling of metals or building materials, for example, can therefore help to conserve the earth's natural resources - and at the same time reduce greenhouse gas emissions, groundwater pollution and biodiversity loss, says Felix Müller, who is responsible for urban mining at the Federal Environment Agency.
And an expansion doesn't just help the environment: "The vision is to become less dependent on raw material imports, rather we should become real raw material producers with secondary extraction. In this way, we can also open up a new economic field,” says Müller. According to him, the anthropogenic stocks of Germany are enriched with around 550 million tons of material per year.
Far from sustainability
The expert says: "As long as the material stocks are growing so much, we are still far away from a sustainable circular economy. But the growing stock holds the immense potential to close material cycles much better in the future than we have been able to do so far. We now have to set the course and adapt the framework conditions.” The federal government is therefore currently working on a national urban mining strategy.
"Mining" in the urban mine is not done with a bucket wheel excavator and pickaxe, but through recycling - and thus to a certain extent it is also a task for society as a whole, says the geologist Bookhagen. But she makes it clear: "Urban mining refers to products at the end of their lives." Only when all other ways, such as repairing or reselling, have been exhausted, does recycling start - "please don't put it in the drawer," says Bookhagen.
There is currently a veritable pot of gold in the German drawers. In a study from 2020, Bookhagen and her colleagues came to the conclusion that the around 200 million smartphones in German drawers contain around 3.4 tons of gold, 1300 tons of copper and 520 tons of nickel.
Material for ten years of production
Researchers at the Institute of German Economics in Cologne[7] calculated in a report published on Monday[8] that the value of the metal in unused cell phones is around 240 million euros. With a view to the material value of the smartphones sold in 2021 of 23.5 million euros, the drawer phones could cover the material requirements for new smartphones for more than ten years. However, the authors limit the calculation themselves: the reality is different, "since not all drawer cell phones are recycled and are also completely recyclable".
That is exactly the greatest difficulty in urban mining, says the expert Bookhagen: "It is very difficult to estimate which raw materials will come back to us, and how and when." On the one hand, it is not at all clear how much steel or aluminum was used in a car or a washing machine 50 years ago, nor how it makes the most sense to recover and process it. Better data is needed here. "One thing is certain: the urban warehouse is growing and has a high recyclable content."
The extraction of raw materials from the urban mine has a lot of potential to become less dependent on raw material imports and rising costs, says Bookhagen. Germany and Europe are doing well compared to other parts of the world. "But one mustn't forget: even if we could get everything out of the urban mine, that wouldn't cover our raw material requirements," the expert continues. The hunger for raw materials is too great for that.
Source
Katharina Redanz, dpa, Recycling: Rohstoffe aus der urbanen Mine immer wichtiger, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 16-01-2023, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/elektronik-recycling-rohstoffe-aus-der-urbanen-mine-immer-wichtiger-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-230116-99-233391
[1] Founded in 1999, Bitkom now represents more than 2,000 member companies - including around 1,000 high-performance SMEs, over 500 innovative tech start-ups, almost half of the 40 DAX companies and many other global players.
[2] https://www.bitkom.org/Presse/Presseinformation/Smartphones-Tablets-Laptops-300-Mio-Alt-Geraete-deutschen-Haushalten
[3] The Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources) (BGR) is a technical and scientific authority within the portfolio of the Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection) (BMWK).
[4] Most of the goods in the anthropogenic stock or urban mines are in use, i.e. in used deposits. A registered car is just as much a used stock as a habitable residential building, furniture, large electrical appliances or a power plant... Unused anthropogenic stocks are to be distinguished from this. https://sns.uba.de/umthes/en/concepts/_f6c8d245.html
[5] "For people and the environment" is the motto of the Umweltbundesamt (Federal Environment Agency) - UBA for short - and sums up what its purpose. As Germany's central environmental authority, it ensures that Germany has a healthy environment in which people can live protected as far as possible from harmful environmental influences, such as pollutants in the air or water. Its range of topics is wide - from waste avoidance to climate protection to the approval of plant protection products. https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/das-uba
[6] https://www.bgr.bund.de/DE/Themen/Min_rohstoffe/Downloads/rohsit-2021.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=4
[7] The German Economic Institute (German: Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft Köln e.V.) (IW) is a private economic research institute in Germany, which promotes a liberal economic and social order. The German Economic Institute is based in Cologne, Germany, with additional offices in Berlin, Germany, and Brussels, Belgium. The IW compiles analyses on economic and social policy issues. As a think tank, it combines research, consultancy and communication services. The institute was founded in 1951 under the auspices of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA) and the Federation of German Industries (BDI). The German Economic Institute is a registered association (e.V.). Its membership consists of some 110 German business and employers' associations as well as a number of individual companies. Membership fees finance the regular scientific research and advocacy. Additionally, the institute conducts research projects and carries out numerous studies financed by third parties, such as public institutions, foundations and businesses.
[8] Sarah Fluchs, Adriana Neligan, Urban Mining für die Zirkuläre Wirtschaft: Wie hoch sind die Rohstoffpotenziale durch Urban Mining?, in: IW-Report 2, 16-1-2023, https://www.iwkoeln.de/studien/sarah-fluchs-adriana-neligan-wie-hoch-sind-die-rohstoffpotenziale-durch-urban-mining.html
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