Recycling -Wikipedia

Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. The recovery of energy from waste materials is often included in this concept. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the properties it had in its original state.[1] It is an alternative to "conventional" waste disposal that can save material and help lower greenhouse gas emissions. It can also prevent the waste of potentially useful materials and reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reducing energy use, air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling). ***** For archiving purpose only *****

Follow my Example, for Better and for Worse: The Influence of Behavioural Traces on Recycling Decisions

Recycling behaviour can recover valuable materials and mitigate green house gas emission from landfills and incinerators. The potential positive impact of individuals' recycling behaviour depends on others also making an effort, for instance avoiding contamination. Knowing what other people have done may therefore influence recycling behaviour. Behavioural traces are evidence of other people's behaviour in a shared environment. Here they relate to waste items already placed in one of two bins, a mixed-recycling bin and a non-recyclable waste bin. In two online experiments and one real-life intervention study we investigate the role of behavioural traces on the willingness to recycle as well as the correctness of recycling. We find that seeing behavioural traces of previous recycling behaviour makes recycling generally more likely and people tend to copy item placement. This in turn increases correctness in groups where the average individual has good knowledge of recycling. Introducing correct items at the start of the day in the intervention study did not increase correctness, possibly because the correct items were soon buried by other items. Implications and future directions are discussed.

Phosphorus Recovery from Wastewater: Bioavailability of P Bound to Calcareous Material for Maize (Zea mays L.) Growth

(1) Phosphorus (P) is an essential plant nutrient, and P deficiency negatively affects plant growth and development. Furthermore, P is a finite and nonrenewable resource, and there is an urgent need to recover P from some of the important waste streams in society. Newly engineered calcareous materials (sol–gel coated cat litter (CATSAN®)) can bind P from wastewater in decentralized treatment systems and potentially enable P recycling into agricultural production by direct addition of the P saturated material. (2) The effects of the addition of two P-enriched calcareous materials as fertilizers for maize (Zea mays L.) growth were investigated in a mesocosm experiment. We compared fertilization with the P-enriched materials at rates of 6, 12, 25, 50, 100 kg P ha−1 yr−1 with fertilization with commercial NPK fertilizer. (3) The P fertilization by the P-enriched materials had a significant positive effect on plant height, biomass, maximum light-saturated photosynthetic rate, respiration rate, and total P content in biomass. However, plants fertilized by the commercial NPK fertilizer performed significantly better in the majority of measured parameters at identical fertilization rates. (4) The bioavailability of the P bound to the calcareous material was very low. However, the studied material has the potential to be used as part of a decentralized treatment solution to remove and subsequently recover and recycle P from wastewater.

Investigating methods of phosphorus recovery from eutrophic lakes through hypolimnetic withdrawal and purification

<p>As global reserves of phosphorus (P) become scarce, recycling of P will be key to sustainable food production in future. The hypolimnetic withdrawal and purification circuit (HWPC) is a novel method that aims to remove and capture P accumulated in the near-bottom water of eutrophic lakes. Similar to the basic principle of wastewater treatment, the lake water is treated for the precipitation of P and other elements, and the formed particles are collected in a filtering unit while the purified water flows back into the lake. The method has been tested in a pilot project at Lake Kymijärvi, southern Finland.</p><p>In the current study, we observed the efficiency of three different water treatments in the HWPC in terms of P precipitation: 1) water aeration; 2) aeration + Ca(OH)<sub>2</sub> addition; 3) aeration + tannin-based biopolymer addition. Moreover, we studied the chemical composition of the precipitate formed in each treatment to understand its potential for P recycling. The aim of the study was to provide a better understanding to further develop and apply techniques to recover and recycle P from eutrophic lakes.</p>

Lithium-ion battery recycling technology based on controllable product morphology and excellent performance

Recycling spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is the most effective way to solve the associated problems of ecological damage and resource depletion. However, the focus of recycling technology is mostly waste...

Recycling of spent Lithium-ion Batteries in view of Green Chemistry

Recycling of spent lithium-ion battery (LIB) is of great importance for both critical metal supply and environmental protection. Although the physical chemistry is still focusing on pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy and electrometallurgy,...

Effect of cellulase on the UCST behavior of sulfobetaine zwitterionic surfactants and the cellulase recovery mechanism

Recycling cellulase was realized by adding UCST zwitterionic surfactants, and the process was simple and green without adding acids and alkalis.

Direct application of spent graphite as functional interlayer with enhanced polysulfides trapping and catalytic performance for Li-S batteries

Recycling and reusing spent graphite have become an urgent task with massive lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs)/electric vehicles (EVs) retired every year. Meanwhile, interlayer design based on...

The Organized Recycling of Roman Villa Sites

Recycling and reusing architectural glass, metal, and stone at villas was a circumstantially specific productive activity. The circumstances are an increasingly recognized archaeological phase in both the rural and the urban settings: when buildings were abandoned or left uninhabited from the third century AD onwards, desired building materials were removed, and in many cases reprocessed directly on site. The on-site nature of villa recycling has seemed unusual, especially because of the establishment of workshops in formerly residential rooms. The initial supposition in early twenty-first-century scholarship on the ‘end of the villa’ was that the workshops were installed by squatters at abandoned sites, but the work presented here challenges this. This chapter takes a broad view of villa recycling and reuse, considering three factors (chronology, setting, and afterlife) to explore the economic motivations for on-site villa recycling, and discussing the logistics that made it an economically viable activity.