Urban Mining

To address resource depletion and waste management in urban environments, this approach focuses on the recovery of valuable materials from waste streams, including electronic waste (e-waste), construction and demolition debris, and end-of-life vehicles, among others.
BACK TO LIST
Technology Life Cycle

Technology Life Cycle

Growth

Marked by a rapid increase in technology adoption and market expansion. Innovations are refined, production costs decrease, and the technology gains widespread acceptance and use.

Technology Readiness Level (TRL)

Technology Readiness Level (TRL)

Field Validation

Validation is conducted in relevant environments, where simulations are carried out as close to realistic circumstances.

Technology Diffusion

Technology Diffusion

Early Adopters

Embrace new technologies soon after Innovators. They often have significant influence within their social circles and help validate the practicality of innovations.

Urban Mining

Urban mining addresses the critical problem of resource scarcity and waste management in rapidly growing cities. As urban areas expand, the demand for raw materials increases, leading to environmental degradation and depletion of natural resources. Simultaneously, cities generate vast amounts of waste, including electronic waste (e-waste), construction debris, and discarded consumer goods, which pose significant disposal challenges. Urban mining offers a sustainable solution by recovering valuable materials from this urban waste, thereby reducing the need for virgin resources and minimising environmental impact.

At its core, urban mining is about redefining waste as a resource, playing a crucial role in creating a circular economy where materials are continuously reused, reducing the strain on natural resources and lowering carbon emissions. The process utilises sophisticated recycling technologies to recover materials that can be reused in the production cycle, reducing the need for virgin materials and minimising environmental impact. Approaches such as electronic waste (e-waste) recycling, material recovery facilities, and advanced sorting technologies play a pivotal role.

These methods enable the efficient separation and purification of materials, ensuring they meet industry standards for reuse. For example, urban mining can reclaim gold, silver, copper, and palladium from discarded electronic devices, offering a more sustainable and often cheaper alternative to traditional mining practices. Additionally, repurposing construction materials helps reduce the demand for new resources and decreases the volume of waste sent to landfills.

Furthermore, urban mining fosters economic growth by creating new industries and job opportunities. As cities adopt more sustainable practices, the demand for expertise in waste management and material recovery will increase, driving innovation and investment in green technologies. This shift towards sustainability not only benefits the environment but also enhances the quality of life for urban residents by promoting cleaner, healthier cities.

Image generated by Envisioning using Midjourney

Sources
Materials are continuously accumulating in the human-built environment since massive amounts of materials are required for building, developing, and maintaining cities. At the end of their life cycles, these materials are considered valuable sources of secondary materials. The increasing construction and demolition waste released from aging stock each year make up the heaviest, most voluminous waste outflow, presenting challenges and opportunities. These material stocks should be utilized and exploited since the reuse and recycling of construction materials would positively impact the natural environment and resource efficiency, leading to sustainable cities within a grander scheme of a circular economy. The exploitation of material stock is known as urban mining. In order to make these materials accessible for future mining, material quantities need to be estimated and extrapolated to regional levels. This demanding task requires a vast knowledge of the existing building stock, which can only be obtained through labor-intensive, time-consuming methodologies or new technologies, such as building information modeling (BIM), geographic information systems (GISs), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning. This review paper gives a general overview of the literature body and tracks the evolution of this research field.
The energetic transition to a low-carbon future is boosting the market for renewable energies, and this is increasing the demand for minerals. Consequently, with a renewed push for sustainable development and environmental protection, these minerals will have to come from sources that do not affect vulnerable ecosystems.
Construction is one of the planet’s largest consumers of raw materials, but very little is reused. Urban mining is part of the solution.
•Potential value recovery defines waste streams or secondary resources.•Urban mining uses primary mining techniques to recover value and resources.•Global secondary reserves of aluminum are estimated in 413 Mt.•E-waste urban mining has a global potential of USD 53.6 billion value recovery.•Secondary resources recovery mitigates impacts and endorses sustainability.
As peaks loom for many minerals, cities could go from being simply centres of consumption to becoming the ultimate resource.
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 an...
With the understanding that the mining industry is an important and necessary part of the production chain, we argue that the future of mining must be sustainable and responsible when responding to the increasing material demands of the current and next generations. In this paper, we illustrate how concepts, such as inclusiveness and the circular economy, can come together in new forms of mining—what we call inclusive urban mining—that could be beneficial for not only the mining industry, but for the environmental and social justice efforts as well. Based on case studies in the construction and demolition waste and WEEE (or e-waste) sectors in Colombia and Argentina, we demonstrate that inclusive urban mining could present an opportunity to benefit society across multiple echelons, including empowering vulnerable communities and decreasing environmental degradation associated with extractive mining and improper waste management. Then, recognizing that most engineering curricula in this field do not include urban mining, especially from a community-based perspective, we show examples of the integration of this form of mining in engineering education in first-, third- and fourth-year design courses. We conclude by providing recommendations on how to make inclusive urban mining visible and relevant to engineering education.
Mining isn't the only way to extract the critical raw materials needed for the green transition. Soon, they could increasingly be recovered from waste, reducing the need for virgin materials and the dependence of EU from the import.
Every human activity generates environmental impacts, such as in the case of urban settlements. Conventionally, the urban environmental impacts that are more worrisome are those that are the result of the city itself, such as urban solid wastes and water contamination. These wastes are the remains of urban metabolism, and society does not know what to do with them. However, what is usually forgotten is that the most significant environmental problem are indirectly about cities: they are linked to the importation of goods that the city needs to function, such as the exploitation of natural resources, industrial processes, and global transport networks that depend on fossil fuels.

Interested in our research?

Read about our services for help with your foresight needs.
SERVICES

Envisioning is an emerging technology research institute and advisory.

2011 — 2024