Urban mining
Eco-friendlier with urban mining (Audio)
Urban mining is a revolutionary way of environmental recycling. In urban mining a city is seen as a place to regain raw materials. It is different from the recycling process we usually know (such as for glass or PET), because it is the recycling of different valuable substances from a mix of materials. It involves methods which are alike to those used by the extraction of resources from rocks, which is why it’s called “mining”. When a house is abandoned, both objects like a wooden door and raw materials like iron can be saved from the ruin.
About 7.5 tons of silver and 300 kilograms of gold end up in Swiss waste incineration plants every year. With today’s technology about half of the silver and two thirds of the gold can be recovered. An area in the city, the size of 34 km² (which is approximately twice the size of Wetzikon), has around 2.2 Mio. tons of raw materials.
Make new from old (utopia.de)
Because the technologies constantly get more efficient, urban mining is far less harmful to the environment than primary mining. But still the technologies aren’t developed far enough to fully recycle all the different mixtures found in buildings.
Quiz
What is NOT associated with urban mining?
A) Trying to reduce the waste that ends up in waste incineration plants
B) Environmentally friendly way of producing materials
C) Process of recycling a mixture of different substances
You can find the solution in the comment section.
More information
Team: Anna Meier and Seraina Wernli
Notes: Urban mining.pdf (99.05 kb)
PowerPoint: Urban mining.pptx (976.64 kb)
Vocab
urban mining = städtischer Abbau
extraction of resources = Gewinnung von Rohstoffen
raw materials = Rohstoffe
waste incineration plants = Kehrichtverbrennungsanlagen
recovered = wiedergewonnen
primary mining = Erstgewinnung
Sources
Main source giant horse (Sway presentation)
Basic information (urbanmining.ch)
Video about technical data (br.de)