Goods cycle
As a product cycle is called the life cycle of goods . Goods are obtained from raw materials in industrial processes. They are sold for commercial or private use. The commodities are when their functionality is not given more, either recycled or disposed of as waste.
raw materials
Nature offers the elements known from the periodic table . These occur in pure form on the earth's surface, usually in very small quantities: 46.6% oxygen , 27.7% nitrogen , 8.1% bauxite and 5% iron . All other elements (around 90) are divided into the remaining 12.6%. Enriched and separated from foreign atoms, the technical raw materials are created . As an input variable for production, raw materials are also known as production factors.
production
The production gains from the supplied raw materials by developing and manufacturing goods and products through sales in the economic cycle to occur. During the production itself, residual products (= rejects) are wasted, which can either be recovered to raw materials as valuable materials by means of recycling or must be disposed of as low-value waste (= unusable residual materials).
use
The use to check out the use of the recovered goods / products represents. This can be done by industry or by private individuals. With use, the product loses the properties initially assigned to it through aging . This is due to the different types of material fatigue , such as corrosion or wear . If the material fatigue exceeds a certain limit, the product becomes unusable and becomes a disposable item . Depending on its properties, the product can now be sent to a recycling company or must be deposited, "disposed of".
recycling
When recycling is the process wherein from waste another (secondary) -Rohstoff is. In addition to recycling, the options for reuse and recycling are also available. For reuse (e.g. returnable bottles), the disposed product is only processed, i.e. H. cleaned and thus brought back to a higher quality condition. The actual problem of recycling is not solved here, but only postponed. The recycling / further use tries to win higher quality products from sorted recyclable materials. The actual recycling separates valuable composite materials as far as possible into the individual raw materials in order to bring them back into the product cycle as pure and unadulterated as possible. In all three processes, however, there is always waste that has to be disposed of as low-value residues.
Waste
All wastes named here currently represent low-value residues that have to be stored in landfills for a long time. In Germany there are currently 5 classes of landfill for the storage of:
- Landfills for hazardous waste
- Landfills for non-hazardous waste
- Landfills for inert waste
- Landfills for building rubble
- Landfills for excavated soil