Tag Archives: sustainable material cycles

Growth of in-use stocks: Central obstacle to closing material cycles

By | 13th November 2017
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Recycling, re-use, and remanufacturing are central sustainable development strategies. In most cases, they save both: energy and primary resources. There are currently four main indicators to measure the performance of a recycling/re-use/re-manufacturing loop: Costs. In many cases, recycling is not economic, which mostly explains the tremendously high loss rates for many metals (Graedel et al.,… Read More »

The lifetime of materials in the technosphere

By | 29th October 2017
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We often hear the claim that metals can be recycled indefinitely often, without loss of quality.*) Unfortunately, this claim is not true and the myth of perfect and indefinite recycling needs to be busted. The reasons are that a) our waste management industries cannot perfectly separate the different metal fractions from the waste streams, so… Read More »