RECYCLING 1)
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"Converting … wastes into new products by using the resources contained in them" (adapted from the UNESCO – UNEP glossary of environmental education terms).
Nature recycles automatically all of its productions, even if this process sometimes covers eons. This is not the case for many human products which artificial character does not allow for their insertion in natural cycles, or because accumulation of waste is too fast to be accomodated by natural processes.
Recycling is a typical systemic theme. It covers practically all the products of human activity, and not only "solid" wastes as stated by the UNESCO – UNEP glossary.
Indeed, every product terminally becomes waste in the long run. And gases, liquid effluents and most of all, heat resulting from entropy production should be considered.
The systemic problem is to put the use of natural resources and energy as much as possible in a recurrent circuit. This aim implies scientific and technical research, economic rethinking and a change in socio-cultural values and subsequent management politics.
Categories
- 1) General information
- 2) Methodology or model
- 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
- 4) Human sciences
- 5) Discipline oriented
Publisher
Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).
To cite this page, please use the following information:
Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]
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