مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد چرخه اقتصاد – نگرشی درباره تصفیه فاضلاب – امرالد 2018

Interest in the circular economy model is increasing as more industries have shown some commitment to it. The main objective of the circular economic model is to eliminate waste “systematically, throughout the life cycles and uses of products and their components” (Zils, 2015). “It is perceived as a model that helps to generate more durable products, facilitate disassembly and refurbishment and, where appropriate, consider product/service shifts” (ELLEN MACARTHUR FOUNDATION, 2015a). “A circular economy will create value for local communities and municipalities, which must seize their opportunity to organize local closed loops for water, material and energy recovery” (VEOLIA, 2015, p. 2). The principle of circular economy is a zero-waste imperative and it is based on three rules: (1) All durables, which are products with a long or infinite life span, must retain their value and be reused but never discarded or down cycled (broken down into parts and repurposed into new products of lesser value). (2) All consumables, which are products with a short life span, should be used as often as possible before safely returning to the biosphere. (3) Natural resources may only be used to the extent that they can be regenerated (Stuchtey, 2015). A circular economy perspective can bring water innovations that support water regeneration. Water has caught the attention of circular economy discussions as it is one of the most important resources for production. Sectors such as agriculture or aquaculture depend almost entirely on it. For this reason, various analyses about the role of water in a circular economy have been made. “Water has been pushed into a linear model in which it becomes successively more polluted as it travels through the system, rendering future use impossible” (Stuchtey, 2015). The linear model is based on “take-make-dispose” (VEOLIA, 2015), which considers large quantities of cheap and easily accessible materials and energy (ELLEN MACARTHUR FOUNDATION, 2015b). The vision of water as part of circular economy can be described as follows: Water as part of a circular economy, […] [must] retains full value after each use and eventually returns to the system. And rather than focus solely on purification, we should attempt to prevent contamination or create a system in which water circulates in closed loops, allowing repeated use. [When water is used for industrial purposes] the major goal is not to keep water free of contaminants but to manage the integrity of the closed-loop cycle. Situations that favour the durable view include those in which it would be too costly to dispose of the solvents and re-create them […]. Whenever possible, energy and nutrients should be extracted from consumable water (Stuchtey, 2015).