Waste accounts for approximately 5 percent of Aotearoa New Zealand’s emissions. Waste management provides opportunities and challenges across mitigation, adaptation and transition – through rethinking the way we utilise and discard resources.
Circular Economy – sustainable materials management
Learn about where materials come from and how we can ensure they are used more efficiently, for longer and can then be reused. This is the aim of the Circular Economy – the result of choices and strategies by suppliers, designers, businesses, policymakers and all of us as consumers.
A Circular Economy of Metals: towards a sustainable societal metabolism
Learn about the consequences of metal production as well as opportunities to move towards a more sustainable metal production system. You’ll hear about options to reach a circular economy for metals: keeping metals in use for a long time to avoid having to mine new ones.
Climate change is a waste management problem
Carbon dioxide is a waste product and dumping it into the open air is a form of littering. This article explores climate change from a different perspective with a different type of solution, arguing that keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is a waste management problem.
Climate change impacts of electricity generated at a waste-to-energy facility
A cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment of a waste-to-energy (WTE) facility in Jamesville, New York was undertaken to understand the climate change impact as an electricity generator. The results from this analysis disagree with claims in the reviewed literature that WTE can avoid GHG emissions overall, although avoided emissions reduce the magnitude of its impact.
Waste management strategies to mitigate the effects of fluorinated greenhouse gases on climate change
Fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases) utilisation in refrigeration and air conditioning has increased drastically over the last few decades – with serious consequences for global warming. This critical review aims to provide a revision of the current F-gas management problems and strategies and an overview of innovative strategies that can be applied to build a sustainable market under circular economy principles.
