Week 14: Zero Waste and Circular Economy

5 R’s of Zero Waste

• → Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose

2 types of recycling

• closed-loop recycling: recycling into new similar products

• secondary recycling: recycling into different products

quality downgrade: same piece of plastic only recycled ~2-3 times before its quality decreases until it can no longer be used + hiring plastic added to the recycled process each time

biological metabolism: closed organic loop

technical metabolism: close inorganic loop