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To complete its green transition, Europe should mine its own trash (www.anthropocenemagazine.org)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/zerowaste@lemmy.ml
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[–] 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I've wondered for a while if this shouldn't be more of a thing. Even if we don't have the tech to do it well now just sorting the stuff out for the future makes sense to me

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    It's all a cost-question. Most of these materials cost more to recover, than to buy new. But that will surely change in the future, and it's good that we increase focus on it already from the start.

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    • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    And maybe try to get recyling rates that have two digits.

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    [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Not quite the same thing, but our metro landfill is used as a source for methane for the city. The city has been doing this for twenty years. Most of the city buses as well as heavy municipal trucks (like garbage trucks or snow plows) were converted to run on methane. The methane recovered from the landfill powers all of these city vehicles and even has excess production that is piped into the municipal natural gas pipelines so that retail, commercial and industrial consumers can use it too.

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    2 comments in c/zerowaste@slrpnk.net view that post
    [+] 15 points 5 months ago* (2 children)
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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    What do you mean by

    I’d been pretty skeptical that solar could ever cover its production costs

    If you mean EROI, no one should be skeptical about that, unless you are constantly being fed misinformation. Solar panels quickly generate the energy required to produce them, in the worst cases it takes a few years.

    And the good thing about solar panels is, they are incredibly durable, once they are put up they just keep on producing energy. Personally, I would argue that as long as not every roof is covered with them, recycling solar panels is bad. Why replace something that is still producing energy (and at that point for free, in EROI terms), when you could leave the old ones up and put the new panels on roofs that have none yet.

    Luckily, companies are starting to see that as well, and refurbish solar panels instead of recycling them.

    There's a reason it goes reduce -> reuse -> recycle.

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