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Re-Use Versus Recycling: Selected Comparisons

Informal waste collection - picking up recyclable materials from the waste stream in order to make a living by processing or reselling secondary raw materials or goods - is well known from developing countries but also occurring in Europe. If something is not used or does not work anymore it ends up as waste. In our modern consumer society people rarely think of these items as being valuable. For informal collectors this waste - actually re-usable items - has a great value. The formal system of modern waste management, on the other hand, also depends on revenues from recyclable fractions for the funding of their necessary infrastructures. Some wastes are more costly than others and many times the decisions made concerning re-use, recycling or disposal are not governed by environmental and waste prevention awareness, but much more often are based on economic demands.

The project TransWaste (www.transwaste.eu), a project within the CENTRAL EUROPE programme co-financed by the ERDF, provides the opportunity to investigate the potential environmental benefits and burdens of possible re-use and recycling options of parts of the often neglected bulky waste stream.
Within the project the environmental benefits or burdens of 13 so called indicator products were investigated. Those indicator products represent items that are mainly collected by informal waste collectors in Central Europe and cover the whole array of collected goods from small and big WEEE to furniture or bulky sports equipment. In the presented paper the results concerning environmental benefits or burdens of three selected indicator products Plastic garden chair, PC, wood panel) discussed. The results of the environmental assessment show that the informal scenario has in most cases less environmental burdens than the formal scenario. The reason for it is the avoided production of reused items in the informal scenario. Also the different and often more environmental burdened end of life phase in Hungary where reused items are brought to, are not influencing this result. This avoidance of the production phase can therefore compensate the given higher burdens in the end of life phase. Even the illegal disposal, which is considered in the informal scenario for 30 % doesn’t influence the total results.

Copyright:	© Lehrstuhl für Abfallverwertungstechnik und Abfallwirtschaft der Montanuniversität Leoben
Quelle:	Depotech 2012 (November 2012)
Seiten:	6
Preis:	€ 3,00
Autor:	Dipl.-Ing. Gudrun Obersteiner Silvia Scherhaufer Andreas Pertl
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