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Waste recycling within the context of industrial ecology
Resources, Conservation and Recycling 39 (2003) 1 /2 www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec
Editorial
Waste recycling within the context of industrial ecology It is generally recognized that waste generation rates are directly proportional to population and the level of industrialization. The latter is needed to manufacture goods, which in tandem with services, are needed to operate modern societies. With a global population that approaches 10 billion, there is an increased need to provide more support infrastructure such as buildings, roads, dams and lifelines, which require huge volumes of materials to construct, maintain, and rehabilitate. Furthermore, greater utilization of raw materials, a fraction of which have to be managed downstream as waste, is a requirement of increased industrial production. The use of virgin materials alone in manufacturing and construction processes is becoming unsustainable because of the increasing costs of exploring their sources in locations where their availability is limited, and the fact that disposal of wastes that are produced from their processing and use is costly. Environmental factors coupled with economic considerations, have driven the increasing trend in which manufacturers view their products within a closed cycle where materials and energy investments have aggregate value beyond the point of sale. Essentially, this implies that materials could be reused for the same or other purposes at the end of their traditional service lives. Manufacturing processes are often nested in stages that may be parallel or sequential. At each stage of a process, byproducts are produced, some of which may have immediate or longer-term use. The utilization of such byproducts in efforts to reduce the out-of-plant industrial or municipal waste disposal costs depends on the extent to which the byproducts can be used in other internal or external processes as raw materials at costs that are comparable to those of traditional materials. Often, this requirement translates to minimal processing and/or transportation costs. The increasing cost of compliance with environmental regulations such as those relating to waste emission standards, has necessitated the adoption of integrated approaches that may involve the optimization of industrial processes to arrive at material balances that minimize total operational costs. The new discipline of Industrial Ecology has evolved as an amalgam of concepts and techniques that can provide the framework for stage-specific optimization of factors in manufacturing, service life tracking and post-use management of products. Despite recent efforts by a variety of industrial organizations to apply Industrial Ecology concepts to the management of materials produced by industries, several 0921-3449/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 2 1 - 3 4 4 9 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 1 6 - 7
2
Editorial
constraints to its widespread applications still exist. Among these constraints is the lack of easily implementable decision-making support systems that include significant externalities. In decision-making processes about materials management, recycling costs need to be compared with disposal costs. In some cases, it may be advantageous to provide the byproducts for use as raw materials outside the plant or industry that produce them. Lack of enabling technology and regulatory support can pose significant constraints with respect to large-scale material substitution and recycling. Some factors that are needed for comprehensive analysis of materials and energy management options are still not easily quantifiable. For example, valuation of natural resources is an important issue on which research advances need to be made in order to expand the application of Industrial Ecology in materials management. Approaches, techniques and programs such as material and energy flow studies, environmental cost accounting, life-cycle inventory assessment and design (CLA), and design for environment, need to be better interlinked to provide an effective decision-making tool on material and process substitutions. Owing to the fact that the construction industry utilizes very large quantities of materials, there is a natural tendency to use industrial byproducts in construction in volumes that are greater than those of any other industry. Specific examples of byproduct/waste reuse in construction are the use of sewage sludge for construction of dikes; paper sludges as materials for landfill covers and waste barriers; scrap tires as fill materials for embankments and roads; and fly ashes as soil stabilization materials. The direction of policy developments in many countries indicates that byproduct and waste recycling will continue to expand to many industrial sectors. Many European-style ‘take-back’ laws are emerging in other regions for products like plastic packing materials, batteries and tires. Hilary I. Inyang, Terezinha Ca´ssia de Brito Galva˜o, Helene Hilger Global Institute for Energy and Environmental Systems, University of North Carolina, 9201 University City Blvd., Charlotte, NC 28223-0001, USA E-mail: [email protected]
Editorial
Waste recycling within the context of industrial ecology It is generally recognized that waste generation rates are directly proportional to population and the level of industrialization. The latter is needed to manufacture goods, which in tandem with services, are needed to operate modern societies. With a global population that approaches 10 billion, there is an increased need to provide more support infrastructure such as buildings, roads, dams and lifelines, which require huge volumes of materials to construct, maintain, and rehabilitate. Furthermore, greater utilization of raw materials, a fraction of which have to be managed downstream as waste, is a requirement of increased industrial production. The use of virgin materials alone in manufacturing and construction processes is becoming unsustainable because of the increasing costs of exploring their sources in locations where their availability is limited, and the fact that disposal of wastes that are produced from their processing and use is costly. Environmental factors coupled with economic considerations, have driven the increasing trend in which manufacturers view their products within a closed cycle where materials and energy investments have aggregate value beyond the point of sale. Essentially, this implies that materials could be reused for the same or other purposes at the end of their traditional service lives. Manufacturing processes are often nested in stages that may be parallel or sequential. At each stage of a process, byproducts are produced, some of which may have immediate or longer-term use. The utilization of such byproducts in efforts to reduce the out-of-plant industrial or municipal waste disposal costs depends on the extent to which the byproducts can be used in other internal or external processes as raw materials at costs that are comparable to those of traditional materials. Often, this requirement translates to minimal processing and/or transportation costs. The increasing cost of compliance with environmental regulations such as those relating to waste emission standards, has necessitated the adoption of integrated approaches that may involve the optimization of industrial processes to arrive at material balances that minimize total operational costs. The new discipline of Industrial Ecology has evolved as an amalgam of concepts and techniques that can provide the framework for stage-specific optimization of factors in manufacturing, service life tracking and post-use management of products. Despite recent efforts by a variety of industrial organizations to apply Industrial Ecology concepts to the management of materials produced by industries, several 0921-3449/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 2 1 - 3 4 4 9 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 1 6 - 7
2
Editorial
constraints to its widespread applications still exist. Among these constraints is the lack of easily implementable decision-making support systems that include significant externalities. In decision-making processes about materials management, recycling costs need to be compared with disposal costs. In some cases, it may be advantageous to provide the byproducts for use as raw materials outside the plant or industry that produce them. Lack of enabling technology and regulatory support can pose significant constraints with respect to large-scale material substitution and recycling. Some factors that are needed for comprehensive analysis of materials and energy management options are still not easily quantifiable. For example, valuation of natural resources is an important issue on which research advances need to be made in order to expand the application of Industrial Ecology in materials management. Approaches, techniques and programs such as material and energy flow studies, environmental cost accounting, life-cycle inventory assessment and design (CLA), and design for environment, need to be better interlinked to provide an effective decision-making tool on material and process substitutions. Owing to the fact that the construction industry utilizes very large quantities of materials, there is a natural tendency to use industrial byproducts in construction in volumes that are greater than those of any other industry. Specific examples of byproduct/waste reuse in construction are the use of sewage sludge for construction of dikes; paper sludges as materials for landfill covers and waste barriers; scrap tires as fill materials for embankments and roads; and fly ashes as soil stabilization materials. The direction of policy developments in many countries indicates that byproduct and waste recycling will continue to expand to many industrial sectors. Many European-style ‘take-back’ laws are emerging in other regions for products like plastic packing materials, batteries and tires. Hilary I. Inyang, Terezinha Ca´ssia de Brito Galva˜o, Helene Hilger Global Institute for Energy and Environmental Systems, University of North Carolina, 9201 University City Blvd., Charlotte, NC 28223-0001, USA E-mail: [email protected]