Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover
Before terms such as
circular economy,
Product Stewardship
and zero waste became popular,
the
4 R's Strategy
provided a traditional guideline to understand a whittle down approach
to waste minimization.
Providing information about
Recycling Fundamentals
is a key goal of Waste.net
with a focus on recycled commodity
Prices
and
Market
intelligence from over the past few decades.
Technology advancements have enabled the 4 R's Recovery Strategy to develop into default methods to encompass the spectrum for
the treatment & handling of waste materials.
4 R's Information
For anyone seeking current information or research data on
waste Reduction, Reuse, Recycling and Recovery,
you may access and ask your
4 R's Strategy Questions
to a core group of experienced and knowledgeable recycling industry professionals.
The 4 R's Strategy
The 4 R's provides an ecologically sound and environmentally friendly approach to minimizing and managing
waste
and waste streams.
The 4 R's approach attacks a waste stream in a logical and methodical method by taking steps to sequentially
Reduce,
Reuse,
Recycle
and
Recover
a waste stream into incremental fractions.
By eliminating the low hanging fruit and then focusing on the balance of the materials you will
reduce the problem or challenge, and will be able to apply a suitable solution.
At Waste.net we believe that 100% of the waste stream can be diverted from disposal, the challenge
is not technology, it is economic.
The greater the percentage of the waste stream you wish to divert, typically you increase the economic challenge.
So you are constantly confronted with a cost justification check and balance.
Waste.net is focused on the development of a sustainable infrastructure based on the economics of
markets for recovered materials and by-products.
Reduce
The success of a strategy to reduce waste is largely dependent upon the adoption of a philosophy to embrace
Resource Conservation
efforts.
Accepting responsibility for environmental sustainability in all personal and business aspects of life.
Expanding on the Resource Conservation philosophy we must pursue a design for a recycle strategy,
to not only reduce excess or waste in the manufacturing process and packaging
but to provide viable product end of life options.
After taking steps to
minimize
the total waste streams we generate we can address the balance of the materials
with a divide and conquer strategy.
This will allow us to reduce the challenge into bite size pieces.
The 4 R's
Reuse
reanimation
strategy encompasses the entire spectrum of used goods.
Spanning from collectibles, antiques and memorabilia that mainly serve an ornamental purpose
to fully functional general used goods.
Secondhand Items
The reuse of secondhand items occurs when an item continues its life with a new owner but
still maintains its original use that it was made for.
Repairable
Repairable goods are used items that require some degree of maintenance in order to extend is life as a functional item.
Parts Salvage
The dismantling of reusable parts as a feedstock to supply the repair or remanufacturing sectors.
Generic Components
While dismantling parts you have the opportunity to accumulate generic components.
These recovered components are typically referred to as Nuts, Bolts & Screws.
This grouping of generic components include a wide range of sizes and shapes of items
that may be suitable for any totally unrelated end use.
Remanufacturing
The refurbishing or remanufacturing of items that begin a whole new life cycle.
Beyond salvage, and to enhance reuse, the industry includes repair and refurbishing, and remanufacturing.
The
auto core
business is an prime example of a long established supply chain of raw refurbished items for rebuilders.
In the future we may see renewed efforts in the design for the repurpose market that support circular economy thinking.
Repurpose
Repurpose or Upcycling of an item by converting into a use unrelated to the items original design purpose.
This also starts the item on a new life span.
Surplus Inventory
Surplus Inventory refers to NEW Obsolete Inventory for Liquidation, leftover end or odd lots.
An efficient method of returning unproductive inventory into the value chain exists as the
Surplus Inventory
Market.
Seconds
The seconds market refers to NEW off spec Inventory with minor defects,
Seconds
or other Surplus Inventory.
Recycle
The traditional recycling industry has been primarily involved in the
conversion of
commodity
based scrap into directly marketable circular raw feedstock materials
with standardized grades and specifications.
This Commodity to Commodity trading (buying and selling) process is focused around the
costs and efficiency of freight and material handling and driven by the value of the commodity.
Todays recycling industry has evolved largely into a service industry involved in the collection, sorting, processing and transportation of waste streams and by-products and is driven more by service fees as apposed to the commodity value and is commonly referred to as mechanical recycling.
Waste Recovery Efforts Overview
The traditional 4 R's Recovery Strategy was typically thought of either as materials recovered by
Rendering
or as materials to be converted to electricity through
Waste to Energy
(WTE) Facilities.
Environmental awareness efforts, spawned in the 1960's, gained momentum surrounding the 1970's energy crisis.
A general waste
recovery
approach emerged hinging around three main themes
1.) - reduce landfill or disposal
2.) - increase recycled commodities
3.) - produce energy from waste as a fuel
Several schemes where attempted to segregate mixed waste streams at hubs or centers that became known as
Resource Recovery
facilities.
The key challenges that where encountered surrounded a lack of a true understanding of the wastestream and its contents.
The methods and technologies to handle or separate these streams of materials had not yet been identified or developed and
the fundamental economic goals where not firmly established with little or no working knowledge of the markets.
Several decades of innovation, novel ventures and a number of failures have culminated and integrated into
todays revived environmental awareness of the need for a sustainable approach to the waste issue.
A "Cherry picking the low hanging fruit" approach may reduce the volume of the problem
but does not resolve the issue of how to handle of the rest of the residual wastes.
So here we are, at a destination point staring at the potential
Future of waste Recovery
Waste to Energy
Waste to Energy
(WTE)
also referred to as Energy From Waste (EFW) has been commonly limited to being thought of as the
incineration
of solid wastes for the production of electricity.
This legacy, linear thinking approach creates
incinerator ash
and emits undesirable combustion by-products into the atmosphere.
An more sustainable approach would be needed to become a socially acceptable option,
with a method devised to reduce or eliminate the emission issues.
Rendering, Food & Organic Wastes
Traditional recovery efforts have managed to deal with the sanitary requirements of
rendering
of specific biological wastes and market demands have accommodated the recovery of
proteins,
but there has always existed the challenge of how to handle wet wastes.
The large volumes of
Food & Organic Wastes
pose a big issue to deal with and there has always existed a struggle with the recovery industry
at how to approach this problem.
One approach requires the segregation of the wet wastes into its own stream, separate form other general waste materials.
There has always been a desire to provide a simplistic default method for the efficient recovery
of all these materials that have been mixed together.
The
Decomposition Methods
used on organic wastes typically rely on a high degree of quality of source separation of the feedstock inputs.
One common method of wet waste treatment is with
Anaerobic Digestion (AD)
which produces
biogas
and a solid residue.
The solid residue fraction derived from mixed waste feedstocks tends to be poor quality due to the contamination of
non-organic materials.
Pyrolysis of biomass traditionally requires a pretreatment stage drying process.
You may wish to consider the
Yields
produced from Food & Organic Waste or from
Biomass
inputs in the Recovery 2.0 approach. The Recovery 2.0 method accommodates mix waste inputs and does not require a predrying stage.
The Future of Waste Recovery
The recovery sector has rapidly expanded its scope to include non-commodity based wastestreams that include
residual materials
that are difficult to directly segregate and recycle with common mechanical recycling methods.
Generally these materials have been the residual by-products that could not otherwise be easily recycled.
The adoption of innovative technologies and methods for
Chemical Recycling
and
Bio-Refining
have opened the door for the development of the full molecular breakdown and
Elemental Regeneration
of Multi Matrix Composite Wastes and
by-products.
These non-commodity based wastes are reduced to basic elements on a molecular level typically through
Thermal Reduction
methods.
We refer to this approach as
Recovery 2.0
Evolving from the 1970's central resource recovery, developing through curbside and single stream collection
into automated MRFs, the waste recovery industry is positioned for significant advancement.
Chemical Recycling
Chemical Recycling is a term commonly used when referring to the particle depolymerization of plastics.
The typical application tends to use a homogenous feedstock in order to produce a "high spec" resin output.
This form of
Bio-Refining
is also referred to as Chemical Recycling by some in the industry involved in the
Plastic to Oil
production.
Bio-Refining
Refining and Smelting have always been an integral part of a recovery strategy as a
method to reclaim
or purify contaminated or
trace
elements containing metals or inert inorganic materials.
Bio-Refining
expands traditional metal, mineral and petrochemical refining methods and focuses them on the
recovery of materials from various wastestreams and in particular hydrocarbon wastes.
Bio-Refining produces a range of
BioEnergy Renewables
that may be converted into chemicals or fuels.
BioEnergy Renewables
The recovery of
BioEnergy Renewables
addresses the entire spectrum of organic and
hydrocarbon
wastes.
There are a number of
processes
that center around a primary step in the conversion of waste into a Bio Crude product.
Residual Materials
In the quest to achieve environmental sustainability and to keep up with current
Residue Generation Trends
we strive to develop an innovative and comprehensive waste recovery strategy.
With the continuing evolution of mixed or complex end of life (EOL) products that include
Multi Matrix Composite Wastes and by-products, the need to develop a
Residual Materials Management
program is paramount.
By following a multi-stage process of concentration and selective extraction to pursue the recovery of
even trace amounts of desirable or undesirable elements a more circular sustainable environment may be maintained.
Elemental Regeneration
In the future we believe we will see a shift towards
partial
reduction or full
Waste Material Regeneration.
The regeneration process is an ultimate recycling solution for materials in any state (solid, liquid or gas),
to reduce and separate materials back into basic elements.
The regeneration process allows you to
convert materials
such as waste plastics and segregate them into pure Hydrogen & Carbon,
capture carbon dioxide, separate into carbon and oxygen, taking any complex materials and
reducing and separating them back into an elemental state.
Waste Material Regeneration Molecular Element Regeneration
Recovery 2.0
As a default to ultimately treat or handle all types of residues, residual materials and Multi Matrix Composite Wastes,
the
Recovery 2.0
strategy has been developed.
Reject (the 5th R)
The 5th R is referred to as Reject,
since you must have a strategy to deal with all those other materials that are rejected in the first 4Rs.
We need to identify the method of
disposal
for any rejected materials.
The volume of rejects may be greatly reduced with the implementation of a strong
Residual Waste
management strategy to recover residues.
Rethinking the Hierarchy
One school of thought proposes to merge the steps of Recycling and Recovery in order to equalize the thinking
for the options that are chosen for the disposition of particular materials.
There is a need for an interchangeable choice for the highest and best utilization for each distinct type of waste material
between the Recycling or Recovery paths.
Beyond Waste
In an age of innovation and with a refreshed vision of technology, the attitudes and approach to waste and sustainability
have adapted to address the challenge of the future of waste.
The opportunity to collaborate with others that share common interests may present the potential to develop
untapped resources and ventures.
Empower your ideas by networking in with the waste innovation, technology and venture showcase.
Network your Innovative Ideas/Plans for Waste Reduction |
Product Stewardship
Product Stewardship
prevails upon whoever designs, produces, sells, or uses a product to take responsibility for minimizing
the product’s environmental impact throughout all stages of the product’s life cycle, including end of life management.
