Urban Waste Converted to Sustainable Urban Mining

Urban Ore defined opportunities in recycling urban waste and turning it into recycled content for new products.

12 Master Categories Developed by Urban Ore

Urban Ore created a radical concept in Berkeley during the 80s: there is no such thing as waste. Urban Ore creates conceptual designs of zero-waste disposal facilities to receive 12 master categories of discards that can all be recycled.

Every kind of waste falls into these twelve categories in one way or another.

1. Reusables
2. Paper
3. Plant debris
4. Food scraps
5. Wood
6. Ceramics (rock-hard things, including C & D)
7. Soils
8. Metals
9. Glass
10. Polymers
11. Textiles
12. Chemicals
13. COMPOSITES!

NOTE: Composite materials are the big problem. Together they are difficult to separate. The solution is to NOT use composites, or design them for disassembly (European auto manufacturers have had great success with designing for disassembly -- it gives a whole new meaning to reverse engineering!)

The action step is to determine your processes for the identified materials:

What can you redesign to eliminate waste?

What do you buy?

What do you get rid of?

Then eliminate wasteful purchases and practices.

SOURCES:

Earth Resources Foundation
Stephanie Barger
P.O. Box 12364
Costa Mesa, CA 92627
949-645 5163
www.earthresource.org/

GrassRoots Recycling Network
Linda Christopher
PO Box 282
Cotati, CA 94931
707-321-7883
linda@grrn.org www.grrn.org/

California Resource Recovery Association
P.O. Box 276567 Sacramento, CA 95827-6567 916-441-2772
judigregry@aol.com www.crra.com

Gary Liss & Associates
4395 Gold Trail Way
Loomis, CA 95650-8929
Phone: (916) 652-7850
gary@garyliss.com
www.garyliss.com/

Huls Environmental Management, LLC
P.O. Box 4519
Covina, CA 91723-4519
Phone: (626) 969-7816
michael@hulsenv.com
www.hulsenv.com

Richard Anthony Associates
3891 Kendall St
San Diego, CA 92109 USA
858-272-2905
ricanthony@aol.com
www.richardanthonyassociates.com/

Urban Ore
900 Murray St
Berkeley, CA 94710
(510) 841-7283
urbanore.citysearch.com

New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.
45500 Fremont Boulevard
Fremont, CA 94538 (510) 498-5500
http://www.nummi.com