Integrated Resource Management and Recovery

A significant part of the environmental consequences related to activities in society is associated with our consumption of resources. Modern products become more and more complex and rely on more complex sets of resources than before. This emphasizes the need for continuous access to high quality resources, i.e. security of supply, but also the need for efficient recovery of the same resources after the use-phase of the products. While this recovery may appear simple, considerable challenges exist. Management and recovery of resources in waste materials, or in general residual streams in society, depends on the quality of these resources and technological abilities to extract resources from mixed materials, e.g. mobile phones, solar cells, or mixed domestic waste. The "effort" invested in recovery of secondary resources should not be more than the "benefit" associated with the secondary resources. Over the recent decades, DTU Environment has worked extensively both with resource recovery technologies and life cycle assessment (LCA) models (www.EASETECH.dk) dedicated to evaluating resource management and recovery systems. Advanced sustainability assessments of resource recovery and utilization have been carried out e.g. in relation to household and industrial waste systems, biomass residues from agriculture and forestry, energy producing technologies as well as entire energy systems. The presentation provides an introduction to key challenges in relation to sustainability assessment of resource recovery as well as examples of recent research.