Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Adaptive reuse is defined as the aesthetic process that adapts buildings for new uses while retaining their historic features. Using an adaptive reuse model can prolong a building's life, from cradle-to-grave, by retaining all or most of the building system, including the structure, the shell and even the interior materials. [6]
By reducing the production and use of raw materials, closed-loop recycling minimizes harm to the environment and discourages resource depletion. [5] In contrast, open-loop recycling is the process by which a product is recycled but has to be mixed with raw materials to become a new product, typically leading to downcycling .
Repurposing is the use of a tool being re-channeled into being another tool, usually for a purpose unintended by the original tool-maker. Typically, repurposing is done using items usually considered to be junk, garbage, or obsolete.
Venice Biennale installation by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (2022) - artistic upcycling of old textile materials. While recycling usually means the materials are remade into their original form, e.g., recycling plastic bottles into plastic polymers, which then produce plastic bottles through the manufacturing process, upcycling adds more value to the materials, as the name suggested.
The next step or preferred action is to seek alternative uses for the waste that has been generated, i.e., by re-use. The next is recycling which includes composting. Following this step is material recovery and waste-to-energy. The final action is disposal, in landfills or through incineration without energy recovery. This last step is the ...
One way to address this is to increase product longevity; either by extending a product's first life or addressing issues of repair, reuse and recycling. [2] Reusing products, and therefore extending the use of that item beyond the point where it is discarded by its first user is preferable to recycling or disposal, [3] as this is the least energy intensive solution, although it is often ...
Flushing our waste is, well, wasteful, accounting for nearly a third of indoor water use in US homes, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In many parts of the world, the use of ...
Resource recovery can be enabled by changes in government policy and regulation, circular economy infrastructure such as improved 'binfrastructure' to promote source separation and waste collection, reuse and recycling, [5] innovative circular business models, [6] and valuing materials and products in terms of their economic but also their social and environmental costs and benefits. [7]