1648 URBAN MINING IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTS – REALITY OR ILLUSION *J. Kortnik1, K. Dedelyanova2 1Department of Geotechnology, Mining and Environment, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, (*Presenting author: joze.kortnik@guest.arnes.si) 2University of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy, Bulgaria ABSTRACT The Urban mining (UM) is often mentioned primarily in connection with the reuse of precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum and other rare metals, which are mainly used in the electronics industry. In practice, the concept of urban mining is much broader and also encompasses various recycling processes (processing and material/energy reuse) of both individual components and basic elements of various products, infrastructure, residential/industrial buildings, and various types of waste. The definition is based on the concept of Sustainable Development, which stems from the assumption that we live in a closed Ecosystem limited by resources, and industrial ecology, which investigates the material and energy flows of products and processes in industry and the economy. The goals that the model seeks to pursue relate primarily to the extraction of secondary raw materials, energy generation, remediation of environmental burdens and damage, rehabilitation and reuse of land with dumped waste for other purposes, and reducing the costs of maintenance and institutional control. Urban mining is not a completely new model, but it is increasingly being implemented in the practice of circular management in relation to the environment and is upgrading the already outdated linear management model, the so-called end-of-the-pipe model. The article will present the basics of the model and provide theoretical foundations for the evaluation of material extraction. Numerous examples of positive mining practice in Slovenia will be presented. KEYWORDS urban mining, inteligent mining, recycling, waste management. 1. INTRODUCTION The Urban Mining model is mainly associated with the reuse of precious metals, such as gold, silver, platinum, and iridium, and other metals that are primarily used in the electronics industry. In practice, the Urban Mining model has a much wider scope and refers to the implementation of different recycling processes and the reuse of both individual components and materials of products, industrial and residential buildings, infrastructure, and various types of waste that can be extracted from urban environments and used as raw materials [8, 9, 10]. Further, the Urban Mining model is based on the concept of Sustainable Development, which assumes that we live in a closed resource-constrained ecosystem, and on the concept of Industrial Ecology, which examines the material and energy flows of products and processes in the industry and economy [3]. In the past and in sometimes even today, the dominant economic model of action is the Take-MakeWaste linear model, in which we extract the raw materials from environment, which are then used for the
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM0Mzk2