Toward circular and socially just urban mining in global societies and cities: Present state and future perspectives

Abstract

This study evaluates the perspectives of urban mining in the framework of the circular economy (CE) and starts with a brief analysis of the size of global and urban metabolism and the role that plays materials and waste streams such as construction and demolition waste (C&DW) and waste from electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE). These can be considered as temporary stocks or deposits to be mined in the future, thus shedding light on the concept of recycling potential, end-of-life functional recycling, and material concentration. The recycling potential could be very variable as in the case of metals. The average concentration of some metals (e.g., gold) in WEEE shows that it is higher per ton of electronic product compared to the amount in mining ores. This explains the importance of the concept of urban mining in the circular economy (CE) transition, given that the CE concept was born to address the challenges of high resources consumption rates and worsening environmental problems. The urban mining phenomenon becomes timely and extremely important for cities as they are relevant hubs of materials and energy consumption and source of environmental and social impacts in external areas due to mining and extraction activities. This study points to the need for creating and establishing strong synergies between the concept of CE and urban mining and the role of cities as innovators in finding circular solutions by incorporating more socially just urban mining activities to improve urban resource management, land use, and local and global wellbeing.

The complexity and interconnectedness of circular cities and the circular economy for sustainability

“…The results coincide with research by Dodman et al (2017) and OECD (2021), who identified cities as a sink of natural resources. Considering cities as potential resource stocks (Ghisellini et al, 2022), we can establish an effective mechanism to harness the resources and return them to the loop (Haberl et al, 2021), as identified by concepts of ‘recycling’, ‘reuse’, ‘recovery’, and ‘treatment’. Further evolution of only treating resources within circular cities is implementing urban manufacturing (Hausleitner et al, 2022), identified by concepts of ‘manufacture’ and ‘materials’.…”

“…By closer inspection, we identified four topics: urban mining, circular indicators, adaptive reuse , and regeneration . Urban mining relates to increasing the city's self‐reliance by utilising existing resources already stored within them (Ghisellini et al, 2022). The emerging topic suggests that cities are looking for additional ways to optimise their resource consumption, increase flow values and improve beneficial social and environmental improvements (Kakkos et al, 2020).…”

Future Use Architecture: Connecting housing policy, housing typology, and resource use for housing in Canada

“…However, construction industry stakeholders often overlook these waste streams, resulting in low recycling rates and environmental consequences. 17 In this sense, it is central to generate data related to flows and stocks of materials at national and regional level and in addition, to identify the possible economic benefits for each material. 18 Research into construction-focused urban mining has demonstrated considerable promise and advance.…”

Environmental and Social Life Cycle Assessment of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Management in Italy According to EU Directives

“…WEEE prevention and valorization [6][7][8] in a Circular Economy perspective [9] are therefore necessary resource savings measures to preserve the known natural deposits of these scarce materials [10] and continue to rely on them for the manufacturing of new technological devices. The EU has defined lists of Strategic Raw Materials and Critical Raw Materials.…”