Publication

Material and money flows as a means for industry analysis of recycling schemes

Abstract

In most industrialized countries the recycling of waste materials has increased considerably over the last few decades; however, through a focus on how to increase the amount of recycled waste, the economic nature of recycling has sometimes been neglected. This paper proposes an integrative industry analysis for recycling schemes based on material and money flows. The latter analysis facilitates integrating economic characteristics into considerations with respect to recycling schemes in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of their current status as well as their historical developments. Thereby, the analysis departs from the perspective of the entire recycling industry or branch. Such meso-economic considerations can support, on the one hand, regional authorities in deciding how a recycling scheme should be handled in order to approach the overall goal of sustainable regional waste management and, on the other hand, the respective recycling industry to develop effective improvement strategies in order to succeed in the increasingly competitive regional waste markets. The proposed approach is utilized in a case study for centralized separate bio-waste transformation in Canton Zurich, Switzerland, to show its feasibility as well as its potentials and shortcomings. In the case study two quasi-stationary material and money flow analyses were calculated, and the profitability and competitiveness of the recycling industry were analyzed. Additionally, major consumers’ requirements with regard to the solid transformation products were investigated in a questionnaire survey (N = 102). The case study shows that the proposed methodological approach is appropriate for integrating economic considerations into a comprehensive analysis of a recycling industry and for deriving potential improvement strategies for this industry. For achieving robust decisions for regional material flow management, the approach contributes in three highly relevant ways: (i) it integrates different system perspectives (e.g., material flows, consumer requirements, and money flows), (ii) it examines waste management comprehensively (e.g., inclusion of different waste management options), and (iii) it is transparent for the responsible decision makers and the affected stakeholders.

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Related concepts (35)
Recycling
Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. This concept often includes the recovery of energy from waste materials. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the properties it had in its original state. It is an alternative to "conventional" waste disposal that can save material and help lower greenhouse gas emissions. It can also prevent the waste of potentially useful materials and reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reducing energy use, air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling).
Glass recycling
Glass recycling is the processing of waste glass into usable products. Glass that is crushed or imploded and ready to be remelted is called cullet. There are two types of cullet: internal and external. Internal cullet is composed of defective products detected and rejected by a quality control process during the industrial process of glass manufacturing, transition phases of product changes (such as thickness and color changes) and production offcuts. External cullet is waste glass that has been collected or reprocessed with the purpose of recycling.
Waste
Waste (or wastes) are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor economic value. A waste product may become a by-product, joint product or resource through an invention that raises a waste product's value above zero. Examples include municipal solid waste (household trash/refuse), hazardous waste, wastewater (such as sewage, which contains bodily wastes (feces and urine) and surface runoff), radioactive waste, and others.
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