- What the materials making up the products are
- What the materials might be converted to once they have reached their end of life
- Who might buy the converted materials, and and quality is required
- What processing is required to achieve this conversion
Of course, I've done a quick google search and there appears to be nothing. At least, nothing that systematically goes through products.
Imagine what such a resource might provide for people wanting to set up a business to pick off a small part of the waste stream.
For instance, I know that mattresses are made of spring steel, polyurethane foam and either a cotton or synthetic textile cover. The spring steel can be recycled with scrap steel, and the foam can go into carpet underlay and foam for furniture. To get to this point, the mattress is dismantled by hand.
Knowing this, I can pretty quickly develop a business model around potential waste sources, likely prices to be attained for converted materials, and the processing costs.
Sounds pretty cool to me. If anybody knows of this sort of a thing, let me know. If anybody wants to start one, also let me know. If not, I might need to start one myself to help me in my own business development.
Freely shared, this knowledge could enable guerilla recycling organisations that pop up almost fully formed to cater for a small niche in the waste market. Bringing the power of the information revolution to waste.
Start small thinking big. There is a lot of stuff out there, but what you are after is a unified theory of recycling. There is also the knowledge is power is money issue at the dirty core of our society. To work, it has to be a freely available resource.
ReplyDeleteIf it was there, I think we would all know about it. I think the answer is it has not been grown yet. It is not a small thing, and it would continuously grow as new uses are imagined. There are a few details on many particular components of the overall stream but the big picture is ephemeral. Everything combines together and then can be recycled into everything.
Essentially, you have already started making it, it just needs some formatting.
Perhaps start with:-
• core processes
• groups and organisations with similar objectives.
• risks and example markets.
• Good examples and bad examples.
• How to guide.
Keywords.. What do you look for?
Zero waste, Output streams, Close the loop, Waste hierarchy, Upcycle, Freecycle.
Mixing words like garbage, ecology, environment, waste, vision.
Link to everything else….
www.zerowastewa.com.au
www.ecomii.com/waste/sources
http://recyclestream.com/recycle-concrete
http://www.resource-recycling.com/
Then get them to link back..
It's been almost a week since you wrote this, and I'm still processing it in my head. I'm also amazed at how much info is out there.
ReplyDeleteIt won't start soon, but the first step is structure. Starting small, creating space to grow. And grow with the assistance of others. It could be a community grown thing. Well, that is a wiki, but it could be great. Just another thing to work on...
Hi Adam,
ReplyDeleteI manage the @appropedia Twitter account - I gather you've looked at Appropedia.org.
Your vision totally matches with our own vision of knowledge sharing and collaboration for sustainability. If you've got the passion to work specifically on waste, we've got the platform and the wiki experience to make it happen. What do you think?
Hi Chris,
DeleteI hadn't seen Appropedia.org until your tweet. No surprise there, as I was hunting on a pretty narrow band of waste/recycling.
I love your wiki, and it's exactly what I had in mind. Plus its a platform that already exists - I had a quick look at what was involved in setting up a wiki and very quickly decided I have more pressing issues. Having somebody with experience and existing site avoids these problems (and finding such a person/site is kind of the backstory to my post).
The only potential concern might be that what I have in mind would need to be quite comfortable proposing pretty "industrial" solutions - many of the materials out there can only be recycled through the heavy industry that created them.
I don't see any conflict between sustainability and enlisting the resources of industrial plants, but some do.
Assuming you see no conflict, do you have in mind some sort of branch somewhere in Appropedia?
Thanks Adam - that would be very welcome. We tend to use the lens of "appropriate technology" - and in this case, I can see that the most appropriate solution is a large scale industrial one.
DeleteAppropedia has a very flat architecture - you can just create pages with a descriptive title, we can add categories, and as it develops we can create a navigation box and new categories to tie the related pages together. How does that sound?
Setting up a wiki (I mean fully set up, not just installing the software) is certainly a big job - and we like the idea of working together in the one space!