(soft lulling music)
- Hello there.
Let us talk about our material and waste footprint
and what we can do about it.
As a society, we use heaps of materials all the time.
Concrete and steel for buildings and infrastructure.
Fossil fuels for energy supply and plastic products.
Biomass for food production.
Metals and minerals for many other products.
The average Australian has a material footprint
of about 40 tonnes per year.
4-0, that's four times larger than the global average
of 10 tonnes per person, per year.
All of these material flows create environmental impacts.
And many of our products become waste.
On average, we recycle only about 1/3rd of our waste.
In this module, you will learn about two concepts,
that try to minimize our waste footprint.
Industrial ecology and circular economy.
So, what do they mean?
In industrial ecology,
we try to learn from natural ecosystems,
on how to deal with waste flows.
After all, these natural systems have done it
for many millions and sometimes even billions of years.
Understanding how they do this,
can help us design more sustainable industrial systems.
Where the waste of one industry
becomes a resource for another industry.
And then we have circle economy.
Circle economy, is a very similar concept,
but focused more on products rather than industries.
The idea, is to keep products, components, and materials
circulating in use, for as long as possible,
through long lasting design, repair,
reuse, remanufacturing and recycling.
The ultimate aim, is to minimize the amount
of resources we consume, and the waste we generate.
So, as you can see, this is much, much more
than just recycling waste.
In fact, recycling is actually not the preferred option
of how to deal with waste,
because it needs energy and resources on its own.
Rather, we are talking about a completely new model
of industrial production.
Which involves designing products
so they don't become waste in the first place,
so they last longer.
So they can be repaired and upgraded.
So they can be reused or resold.
And so that materials can be used in remanufacturing.
Both these concepts, industrial ecology and circle economy,
are aiming to achieve, what we call, a restorative process.
Where materials and products can be reused many times.
A good example of such a transformation,
is the take-up of prefabrication
in the construction sector, with machining offsite.
This allows for almost zero waste production,
of building components,
easy retrieval of materials and components,
and building elements that are easy to reuse,
when the building is being demolished.
Working towards zero waste,
has become a worldwide movement.
And we want you as the engineers of the future.
To become part of that.
Thank you.