NO. 124 DECEMBER 2019 ADB BRIEFS KEY POINTS Options for Urban Mining and • Urbanization and industrialization, along with Integration with a Potential improved well-being, still cause a disproportionate Green Circular Economy increase of resource and land use, generating more waste in the People’s Republic of China and carbon emissions. • Urban mining recovers discarded materials and brings components and 1 scarce resources back Stefan Rau into the value cycle. This Senior Urban Development Specialist is important and should East Asia Department be mainstreamed. New Asian Development Bank transformative models are urgently needed to reduce resources and land consumption and promote low-carbon lifestyles. Rapid urbanization, industrialization, and economic growth in the People’s Republic • The People’s Republic of of China (PRC), coupled with increased disposable incomes over the last 40 years, China aims at a green circular have contributed to massive consumption of land and extracted natural resources. economy that would recover Structures were built on new urban land and resources were processed into discarded products and consumable products, and many of which were used and eventually disposed or materials and eventually abandoned. Solid waste management practices remain focused on managing waste move toward full life cycles in volumes effectively and efficiently following national regulations, while trying to product designs, considering minimize environmental impacts. The 3R principle of reduce–reuse–recycle is widely resource extraction, accepted; however, actual practice is lagging behind its potential. Most solid waste that processing, production, is collected is either discarded in landfill sites or processed in municipal solid waste packaging, logistics, sales, incineration plants. As natural resources and land are becoming increasingly scarce, use, share, reuse, recycle, etc. urban waste and other by-products from urban metabolisms, as well as abandoned of everything in our material land and structures, are being discovered for adaptive reuse, or as valuable resources world and internalizing for other products and processes. Recovering these resources is called urban mining currently externalized and, for land, brownfield redevelopment. environmental and social costs. This ADB brief provides background information and cases on urban mining in a broader context, and offers possible avenues for the PRC to become a leader in comprehensive solid waste and resources management, which eventually becomes part of a green circular economy that should virtually generate no more waste. 1 The author acknowledges Juliana Chia who provided research and discussion during an internship at the Asian Development Bank. Arun Ramamurthy and Su Chin Teoh contributed with research and conceptual discussion. Luca di Mario provided inputs as peer reviewer. Akiko Hagiwara and Sophia Castillo-Plaza contributed with review and editing. ISBN 978-92-9261-970-1 (print) ISBN 978-92-9261-971-8 (electronic) ISSN 2071-7202 (print) ISSN 2218-2675 (electronic) Publication Stock No. BRF190606-2 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22617/BRF190606-2 ADB BRIEFS NO. 124 OBJectiVES, DEFINITIONS, Concepts, as products or resources. Urban mining is thus closely related to AND FUTURE STRAtegies and should be integrated with integrated solid waste management strategies, which in the PRC as well as in many other countries has room for improvement. The 3R concept is widely known in the The PRC is engaged in various forms of urban mining. Until PRC and aims at reducing generation of waste, reusing products recently, it even imported electronic, electrical, and plastic and materials without much processing, and recycling components wastes from other countries for mining, recycling, and processing. and elements.2 Urban mining is closely related to recycling and Considering resource scarcity and climate change, there is an may be considered as a post-recycling strategy, if recycling is urgent need to systematically mainstream urban mining and not considered from the start and the waste has already been transform it as part of a green circular economy contributing to discarded. Urban mining may recover resources from secondary an ecological civilization. Applying cradle-to-cradle material and mining, landfill mining, and hazardous waste deposits. It includes product life cycle concepts should be mainstreamed, along with hibernation mining, dissipation mining, and in-use mining eventually revaluing our material world through internalizing (Park et al. 2017). social and environmental externalities. Considerations would start upstream from product design, considering resources and concepts A key to comprehensive urban mining strategies would be to of shared ownership and use as full life cycles of resources and integrate with advanced recycling and integrated solid waste products within local city clusters, urban, and urban–rural circular management. This would entail characterization and distinction economies. All these need to be embedded within an overall green between types of waste and its biological, chemical, and technical circular economy concept aimed at producing zero waste. content; as well as establishment of specialized recovery processes (ADB 2017). Waste classification is critical for effective Decoupling Natural Resource Use from Urban management, e.g., industrial waste, household waste, food and and Economic Growth organic waste, construction waste, electronic and electric waste, The critical challenge to sustainable, low-carbon, and climate- and medical waste. Waste segregation and specialized processes resilient development is the current link between an increasing would recover products, components, and elements. For example, amount of natural resources demand and consumption along steel, copper, silver, gold, and other rare earth elements and plastics with continued urbanization and increased well-being. Urban can be recovered from electronic waste. Doors, windows, stairs, mining; solid waste management based on the 3R principle of façade elements, bricks, concrete elements, steel beams, aluminum reduce, reuse, and recycle; and a green circular economy are profiles, wood, glass, insulation material, and other materials can urgently needed as holistic strategies to address this challenge. be recovered from construction and demolition waste (CDW). The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) highlights Metals, cables, glass, rubber, and other materials can be recovered the urgency and essentialness of decoupling natural resource from vehicles waste. However, as not every type of material is easily use from economic growth through its two concepts of resource recovered, especially products and materials where much energy is decoupling and impact decoupling. Resource decoupling would needed during the production, recycling and urban mining should increase resource use efficiency by reducing primary resources use be considered—but only as a last resort when the reuse of actual per unit of economic activity. In other words, get more for less, i.e., products, building blocks, and components is no longer possible less material, water, energy, and land should be used for the same should they be deteriorated beyond repair. Reuse and recycling economic output. This is generally important specifically when would conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a resource is scarce. Impact decoupling would reduce negative contributing to sustainable development and to an ecological environmental impacts while increasing economic output. This civilization, as indeed is an aim in the PRC’s Thirteenth Five-Year means that resources are used efficiently and effectively over their Plan, 2016–2020.3 lifetime while minimizing adverse environmental impacts (United Nations Environment Programme 2011). PRACTICES AND Opportunities FOR Urban Mining and Relationship to 3R Principle Even as natural resources have become increasingly scarce, cities URBAN MINING AND RELATED Concepts have many untapped resources from discarded materials and products that are normally considered and treated as waste. Urban Urban Mining in Cities and Coordinated within mining, as opposed to primary mining, is understood as a process in City Clusters which products, components of products, elements, and secondary The PRC’s recycling and urban mining industry has flourished raw materials from used products or elements from urban for many years, especially for electronic and plastic waste, even metabolisms are first discarded, and then recovered and reused involving imports until very recently. Readily available technologies 2 The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines recycling as the “process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash and turning them into new products.” See United States Environmental Protection Agency. Recycling Basics. https://www.epa.gov/recycle/ recycling-basics. 3 For instance, one recycled glass bottle would save the amount of energy that could power a computer for 25 minutes. See Recycling Guide. Recycling Facts and Figures. http://www.recycling-guide.org.uk/facts.html. 2 Urban Mining and Integration with Green Circular Economy in the PRC have been applied in facilities located in local industrial parks; and of computers, telephones, television sets, and other electronics. other practices such as mining of old dumpsites or landfill sites About 70 elements are used in smartphones, including between (ADB 2018b) that