4 Material und Umwelt
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Many organizations in Europe collect data and perform research on municipal solid waste and the secondary raw materials that can be produced from them through recycling, urban mining, or landfill mining.However, the information generated and presented thereby is often highly aggregated, while research activities are many a time isolated. Both reduce the usability of the data and information generated. In order to better structure the knowledge generation on secondary raw materials production from municipal solid waste, we suggest to learn from the traditional raw materials mining Industry how to perform an integrated assessment and reporting of anthropogenic resources. This is exemplarily shown for the case of the anthropogenic resource municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash and airpollution control residues. A network of expert institutions from countries throughout Europe was build up to compile the information on legal and technological aspects for the recovery of different secondary raw materials from these residues, including construction minerals, metals, and salts. We highlight in our article the strength of the combined knowledge of an expert network not only on legal and technological, but also local and site-specific aspects of the recovery of secondary raw materials. By doing so, we hope to kick-off a discussion for how to organize and implement a structure for a better management of knowledge on anthropogenic resources, in order to provide a sustainable supply of secondary raw materials for a greener and more circular economy.
The production of secondary materials from waste materials requires, in most cases, significantly lower energy amounts than the primary material production of raw materials. Along with lower energy demand, the greenhouse gas emissions produced are also lower. The duty of a modern waste management system should therefore be to collect and sort the waste materials in a way that the highest amounts of single material fractions with the highest qualities can be generated. In this contribution, the greenhouse gas balances of the theoretical treatment of the household waste, if collected as mixed waste in sanitary landfills, in waste incineration plants, or in mechanical-biological treatment plants, are compared to the existing separate waste collection and treatment in Germany in 2014.
Direct and indirect effects (DIERec) of the recovery of secondary resources are in the range of 500 million tonnes per year in Germany; energy savings are 1.4 million TJ. These savings are between 10 and 20% of the total. The effects of materials recovery exceed those of energy recovery by far with the exception of secondary plastic material where DIERec from energy recovery is higher by factor of 2.7. Untapped potential for the recovery of secondary resources exist in the fine fraction of bottom ash from municipal solid waste incineration, mainly Cu and precious metals and in urban mining.