Abstract
All wastes can be conceived as potential resources for reuse. There are many ways in which recovery could be achieved for the multitude of wastes generated in industrial economies. A framework for characterising recovery and reuse strategies which takes account of environmental and money costs, and political acceptability is proposed. This suggests that waste recovery should be considered in product design, recovery of a greater range of materials should be enhanced, that wastes which are not recovered for direct reuse should be concentrated for future use, and that stress should be placed on reducing fugitive emissions from future industrial ecosystems. A metals case study showing high materials productivity is presented.
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Notes
See Iddo K. Wernick, Robert Herman, Shekhar Govind, and Jesse H. Ausubel, “Materialisation and dematerialisation: Measures and Trends”, Dœdalus 125(3) (Summer 1996).
Energy wastes are also huge. Even in the most efficient economies, perhaps 10 percent of the energy extracted and generated from primary sources actually serves the end user. On the connection between material and energy wastes, see Nebojša Nakicenovic, “Freeing Energy from Carbon”, Dœdalus 125 (3) (Summer 1996).
See Robert A. Frosch, “ Industrial Ecology: Adapting Technology for a Sustainable World”, Environment 37(10) (1995): 15-24, 34-37; Robert A. Frosch, “industrial Ecology: Minimising the Impact of Industrial Waste”, Physics Today 47 (11) (1994): 63-68; and Robert A. Frosch, “Industrial Ecology: A Philosophical Introduction”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 89 (1992): 800–803.
For a general discussion of the meaning of sustainability, see Chauncey Starr, “Sustaining the Human Environment: The Next Two Hundred Years”, Dœdalus 125 (3) (Summer 1996) and Robert M. Solow, “An Almost Practical Step Toward sustainability”, Resources Policy 19 (3) (1993): 162–172.
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© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Frosch, R.A. (1998). Towards the End of Waste. In: Vellinga, P., Berkhout, F., Gupta, J. (eds) Managing a Material World. Environment & Policy, vol 13. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5125-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5125-2_3
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