Potential and Relevance of Urban Mining in the Context of Sustainable Cities

The overall objective of urban mining is the safeguarding of the environment and the promotion of resource conservation through reuse, recycling, and recovery of secondary resources from waste. Urban spaces accumulate large stocks of materials and resources especially contained in buildings, infrastructure, landfills, and also in households. Resource rich wastes like waste arising from electronics, construction and demolition, and end-of-life vehicles represent a stock of potential resources in metals, plastics, and rare earths that can be reclaimed at the end of the product lifetime. Urban mining also maximises the resource and economic value of the waste streams and will be a significant concept in the planning and designing of sustainable cities by incorporating decentralised solutions involving community engagement, reduction of  greenhouse gases, and other benefits, thereby making it consistent with the sustainable development goals. The purpose of this review article is to bring out more comprehensive information on urban mining as a concept and its relevance to the Indian and international context as a source of secondary raw material.  It surveys the composition of urban mines, the relevance and framework of urban mining, the policies and governance mechanisms, the challenges of urban mining, and city planning and support infrastructure.

The second part of the article reports on a panel discussion on “Implementation for Sustainable Cities”, the panellists being Miranda Schreurs, of Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, (also Chair of the panel discussion), Frank Samol and Detlef Schreiber, of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, Germany; Rachna Arora, GIZ, GmbH, India; and T. S. Krishnan, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India. The discussion touched on several of the challenges of urban mining, and the designing and implementation aspects of sustainable cities.