Circular Economy Is the Future – Are We Ready to Accept It?

As somebody who has been dealing with recycling for nearly 20 years, I’ve heard many times that it’s the future. Those were mostly words coming from people who knew very little about it, with some information and news picked up along the way.

I believe that all those people are right, that recycling and circular economy are the future. But it seems to me that, at this speed of implementation, it is a distant future, if we don’t change the way we work and understand the world around us.

At “Jugopan” doo Export-Import Novi Sad, we primarily recycle waste cables. The equipment we have can also be used for the processing of some other types of waste, so we come into contact with plenty of companies and individuals who want to take care of the byproducts of production and work in a proper way. However, in many cases, that’s not easy, and sometimes it’s even impossible with the currently available technology. The problem starts from the moment new parts or products are designed. Engineers focus on the characteristics of the product they’re designing, without taking into account what happens to the product once it can no longer be used.

Let’s take as an example a product we all use, which is a mobile phone. Billions of mobile phones are currently in use. Each of them contains many different materials in greater or smaller percentages, but it’s mostly all small. Separating those materials is a big challenge. Even when everything is separated, not everything can be re-used.

Everything cost-effective is recycled

Still, things are changing. Up till a few years ago, the whole world relied on China. Thousands of containers full of waste, even garbage, were sent every year to China. For everybody, that was the way of getting rid of unwanted materials. Let’s be clear, everything that’s cost-effective is recycled. So, whatever was not cost-effective went to China. And, while China was a kind of a landfill for the whole world, little attention was paid to new technologies and approaches to recycling, because the problem was moved “over there to the other end of the world”. But when China implemented new regulations which stopped this practice, there were great disturbances in the market. Suddenly, China was ready to accept only clean waste without contaminations, that is, waste which is a raw material.

After the initial shock, the conclusion was reached that something needed to be done. From that moment, investments in technologies for the separation and sorting of waste increased considerably. Numerous faculties in Europe got the funds to work on the development of optical, XRF and other kinds of sensors, which can be implemented in fast and automatic waste sorting. Changes occurred in the primary separation of waste (separation at the generation spot). The way waste is collected and transported is also changing. All this is done so that a raw material that can be re-used can be extracted from the waste.

On the other hand, there are increasingly more companies which define their business policy so that there is no generation of waste that would end up at landfills. Although that is hard to achieve, it is important that things are finally moving in the right direction. Circular economy, recycling and ecology are becoming increasingly important aspects in making business plans and creating budgets.

Regional landfill system still not functioning in Serbia

The situation in Serbia is far from good. If we know that, in developed countries, new technologies are only just being mastered, it is clear that here they are implemented only in rare cases. A system of regional landfills where the waste would be disposed of in an adequate way is still not functioning. For some types of waste, there are no processing capacities, so that waste has to be sent abroad, but we have a system of exporting permits which are difficult to obtain and that makes normal waste flows impossible.

It takes a lot of effort and time for things to be made better. There are two ways to make progress. The first is to fully implement the existing laws and regulations. Above all, for the implementation not to be selective. That would produce results in the short term. The other way is education. I believe that this has to start with the youngest ones, kindergarten-age children. It should then be fostered throughout the entire education system. That way, we will get environmentally aware generations, who know what circular economy is and what it is for, who want the waste to be recycled instead of disposed of and who, above all, want to preserve their living environment.

In fact, I believe that we don’t really have a choice. We can’t afford not to deal with this. Our resources are limited. We have to use them again and again. Circular economy is our future, it’s only a matter of time whether we are ready to accept it.

Author: Svetislav Zrnic, “Jugopan” doo Export-Import Novi Sad

Jugopan d.o.o. Novi Sad

Jugopan

Jugopan doo Export Import Novi Sad

Svetislav Zrnić

circular economy

recycling

waste

new technologies

recycling waste cables

sorting waste

regional landfills

primary separation of waste