September 13-14, 2018
Golden, Colorado USA
WORKSHOP FOCUS

This Workshop will focus on these four distinct production chains with the motivation of identifying knowledge gaps and potential pathways for progressing towards zero-waste and energy-efficient processes.

  • Plastics used to package day-to-day applications contribute to vast amounts of polymeric waste accumulation. Thermoplastics contribute to roughly 80% of total plastic consumption and, due to their intended purposes of containing liquids, degrade at very slow rates. Thus, there is a need for innovation in management of plastic waste. This includes methods of treating waste plastics as well as identifying new material solutions for packaging and other single use applications, that can undergo natural microbial degradation and decompose into the environment in non-harmful ways

  • E-waste used for our technologically-advanced devices also contribute greatly to common waste streams. Innovation is required on the front and back end of electronic products – designing products that can be reuse, upgraded, refurbished and disassembled for material recovery as well as innovations in sensing, sorting and separating e-waste streams in an effort to re-use and recycle these materials, sometimes with highly embedded energies. As a result of electrification, there will be new waste streams in the future from EV (Electric Vehicle?) batteries and used PV cells, where innovation for considering end-of-life reuse and material recovery is especially timely

  • Metals at end of life such as automobile scrap contain vast amounts of embedded energy. Limitations in sorting and separation of alloys and impurities in recycled scrap limits their value in recycling and re-use. Novel processes are needed in these areas.

  • Environmental, social and economic drivers demand changes that will lead the industry to approach zero waste and sustainable re-use of active and abandoned mines. This requires addressing the issue of waste rock and tailings. With decreasing ore grades being mined, the volumes of waste rock and tailings have escalated dramatically. Innovations could include selective mining, mineral processing advances, re-use of tailings for new products/materials, reprocessing, recycling the tailings back into the underground or surface excavations more efficiently, or any other beneficial uses. The excavated space remaining after mining operations cease can itself be re-used for a variety of purposed, including underground facilities (e.g., utilities, water or sewage treatment plants), storage (e.g., water reservoir or hydro-pumped-storage of energy, compressed air or natural gas storage, food and product storage). Such re-purposing will also impact on the economics of mining, and lead to long-term life-cycle applications that have increased acceptability