As part of the guiding principle of sustainable resource management, one of the main objectives of the Resources and Closed Substance Cycle Waste Management working area is to reduce the environmental impact of the growing worldwide use of resources by closing the cycle and thus contributing to increasing resource efficiency.

Ökopol draws upon a broad variety of approaches which develop their maximum impact in interrelation with each other.

Product optimisation, extending the lifespan of products and making them easy to repair are effective approaches in this context, which reduce resource consumption and at the same time contribute to waste prevention.

With respect to products becoming waste but also industrial waste the integrating and inter-company optimization of the whole disposal chain from collection to recycling of contained resources is pointing out important possibilities for optimisation.

Pollution related aspects are on one hand tackled through work on the interface between waste management and chemical policy, on the other hand through work on the optimization of functioning of waste management as a sink.

Ökopol combines strategic approaches and policy development with detailed knowledge of waste management techniques, “best available techniques” approaches, emission-related issues and methodological competences in the field of material flow analysis and ecological assessment.

 

Recent work is concerned among other subjects with:

  • The recycling of plastics as well as the identification of plastic inputs into the environment and the development of solutions
  • The optimisation of the recycling chain of electronic waste and end-of-life vehicles
  • The targeted management of information flows to improve the recycling of products or waste
  • The extended product use through reusable solutions (e.g. in the area of reusable packaging in online trade: www.praxpack.de)