國(guó)家地理:沒(méi)有垃圾的世界可能存在嗎(7)

Aurubis sells the aluminum and plastic it recovers to those industries; copper and other nonferrous metals go into its own ovens. In the tidy yard, the dust is swept daily and fed to the smelter. "We have no waste here," Laser said.

奧如比斯廠將提取的鋁和塑料銷往相關(guān)廠家；銅和其他非鐵金屬則進(jìn)入自家熔爐。在整潔的場(chǎng)院里，塵埃按日清掃，送入熔爐。“我們這里不生成廢物。”拉澤說(shuō)。

Worldwide, only about a fifth of all electronic waste is recycled, according to a 2017 UN report. Aurubis even takes shipments from the United States. "But I do wonder sometimes why such a highly industrialized country would give up such resources," Roth said. "They're sitting on billions." That's starting to change. Apple, for example, encourages customers to trade in old iPhones; an intelligent robot in Texas dismantles them and extracts materials for new devices.

根據(jù)2017年聯(lián)合國(guó)的報(bào)道，全世界只有約五分之一的電子廢物得到回收。奧如比斯甚而從美國(guó)進(jìn)口廢品?！暗乙膊粫r(shí)疑惑，為何如此發(fā)達(dá)的工業(yè)國(guó)家將這樣的資源白白送人?！崩瓭烧f(shuō)，“坐失幾十億美元的財(cái)富。”這正開(kāi)始轉(zhuǎn)變。例如，蘋果公司鼓勵(lì)用戶舊機(jī)換新機(jī)；德克薩斯的一臺(tái)智能機(jī)器人將電子廢物拆解，用于制造新設(shè)備。

But copper exemplifies a general challenge: There's a limit to what even aggressive recycling can accomplish. At Aurubis, recycled copper accounts for only a third of production; the rest still comes from mines. World copper production has quadrupled in the past half century and is still growing. The technologies we need to get off fossil fuels require a lot of copper; a single giant wind turbine uses about 33 tons.

但銅也代表了一種普遍的挑戰(zhàn)：即便是最積極的回收策略也有力所不及之處。在奧如比斯，回收銅只占總產(chǎn)品的三分之一，其他部分還是來(lái)自銅礦。過(guò)去半個(gè)世紀(jì)中，全球銅產(chǎn)量增長(zhǎng)了三倍，并持續(xù)上升。我們要擺脫化石燃料所需的技術(shù)需要大量的銅。一臺(tái)巨大的風(fēng)力發(fā)電渦輪所需的銅就約有30噸。

"Demand is growing," Laser said. "You'll never cover that with recycling." The circular economy is going to require other strategies.

拉澤說(shuō)：“需求越來(lái)越大。你永遠(yuǎn)也無(wú)法用回收來(lái)全面覆蓋。”循環(huán)經(jīng)濟(jì)需要其他策略。