Closing the Urban Waste Loop-Delivering Environmental and Financial Sustainability

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Urban Metabolism and Climate Change
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Abstract

The current level of global population and urbanisation has now reached an evidenced level of threat to the well-being of biodiversity, life generally, and, potentially, to the survival of the human species. The link between urban wastes, soil mycorrhizae, photosynthesis, and climate change is examined as an opportunity to close the urban-waste loop. A range of biological processes which are able to treat urban wastes as resources is reviewed. Composting is examined as a way to make wastes safe and to recycle them as useful fertiliser products, to give synergies in reducing pollution, increasing biodiversity, and locking up Carbon, so hel** to limit or reduce atmospheric Carbon dioxide. The place and safe mechanisms of the soil mycorrhizae are outlined and discussed. Experience of recycling over 5 million tonnes of a range of urban wastes containing a wide spectrum of organic Carbon molecules, and many non-organic chemicals, including a laboratory study of recycling a microplastic, which can be safely recycled at local level and at low cost, is detailed with the cash drivers to make urban waste recycling both environmentally and financially sustainable. The possibilities to reduce irrigation need, and reclaim desert are qualitatively and digitally outlined.

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Abbreviations

IPCC:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

GHG’s:

Greenhouse Gases

HDD:

Horizontal Directional Drilling

MSW:

Municipal Solid Wastes

OECD:

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

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Correspondence to Bill Butterworth .

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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Butterworth, B. (2023). Closing the Urban Waste Loop-Delivering Environmental and Financial Sustainability. In: Bhadouria, R., Tripathi, S., Singh, P., Joshi, P.K., Singh, R. (eds) Urban Metabolism and Climate Change . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29422-8_10

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