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Handbook of Waste and Network of Re-use

The intelligent handling of waste is a pressing issue today. Up until the 19th century it had been however an integral part of societies especially when it comes to the waste generated by construction and demolition (Bahamon and Sanjines, 2010). After industrial revolution (1750-1850) which opened the gates of mass production and mass consumption followed and supported by two major forces of capitalism and the dramatic increase in world population, the generation of waste accelerated correspondingly and in a global scale. The mass extraction of natural resources on one hand (limited amount of natural resources), and the problems caused by waste landfilling and incineration such as pollution and diseases on the other hand, made us stop this linear extraction-to-waste trend and recognize recycling as a solution. Recycling chiefly addresses a sustainable approach to reduce the negative effects of waste and at the same time involves processing used materials (waste) into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials (Eco Cloud), however through recycling not only some energy has to be consumed to make this process run but also some portion of pollution would be generated as a side effect. What is more is that up until today recycling has been neither in many cases economically profitable nor has it been possible to recycle all the amount of waste. For instance In US- as the most consuming society on the planet Earth- only 34% of the municipal solid waste can be recycled and the rest ends up in either landfills or incinerators (EPA,2010). This project is to mainly focus on the definition of a rather comprehensive network (Network of Reuse) which sits right before recycling through which as much as possible of the total amount of waste could be directly absorbed back into the society (with minor changes in some cases) in different scales, the resultants of which would be claimed not to be only less energy consumption and less pollution caused through processing waste (as in recycling) but also avoiding a considerable amount of unrecycled materials from ending up in landfills and incineration. In fact the assumed network-which is simulated by the smart grid model- could be said to be a complementary section added to the existing trend today and is on no account against recycling. Like any other network, the network of reuse is based upon strategies, tools, and policies. The rhizomic growing structure of this network-that is in contrast to the tree structure of recycling- suggests a bottom up movement in handling waste and empowering people while the proposed time-line strategy is assumed to be moving from entertainment towards a coherent business network. In fact the project itself suggests the necessity of more bottom up structures to happen in our future planning. The entire project is highly founded upon research and could be applied in a variety of actual designs and concrete cases. Therefore, in this project no specific site is being addressed directly but the actual need for adding the supposed network is explored.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-98819
Date January 2012
CreatorsChavosh, Ardalan
PublisherKTH, Stadsbyggnad
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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