Resources and Recycling Economy
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)
Current references: Resources and Recycling Economy
Title | Client, Project leader, Project partner | Duration |
---|---|---|
Scientific support and assistance for the National Circular Economy Strategy (FKZ: 3772 31 105 0) |
German Federal Environment Agency, Dessau (DE) Project leader: Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie gGmbH, Wuppertal (DE) Project partner: Ökopol GmbH, Hamburg (DE) |
2023 – 2025 |
Supporting study for the project network ForCYCLE Technikum Short description Website project network ForCYCLE Technikum |
Bayerisches Landesamt für Umwelt, Augsburg (DE) Project leader: Ökopol GmbH, Hamburg (DE) |
2022 – 2025 |
Measures to record quantities and types of fishing gear waste from fisheries and aquaculture for high-quality recycling to implement DIRECTIVE (EU) 2019/904 (FKZ3722 33 303 0) Short description |
German Federal Environment Agency, Dessau (DE) Project leader: Ökopol GmbH, Hamburg (DE) Project partner: NABU - Naturschutzbund Deutschland e.V., Berlin (DE); Prof. Dr. Thomas Schomerus, Lüneburg (DE); Word Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) (DE) |
2022 – 2025 |
UrbanFactory II - Ressource Efficient City Districts through Urban Production Short description Project website |
Federal Ministry for Economy and Energy (BmWi), Berlin (DE) Project leader: Ökopol GmbH, Hamburg (DE) |
2021 – 2025 |
Symbiotic industrial estates: Sustainable approaches, potentials for structural change regions and possibilities and limits of transferability to mixed-use districts (FKZ 3719 15 101 0) Short description |
German Federal Environment Agency, Dessau (DE) Project leader: Ökopol GmbH, Hamburg (DE) Project partner: IAT Institut Arbeit und Technik, Gelsenkirchen (DE); Zero Emission GmbH, Wuppertal (DE) |
2019 – 2025 |