Week 3: The Resource Cycle

Question 1

The Resource Cycle

Answer 1

Resource cycle:
1. Extraction/harvest
2. Concentration/purification
3. Production of goods
4. Consumption of goods
5. End of usefulness
6. Reuse: Materials or products that can be used again without major processing./ Recycle: Convert materials that lost their value into new materials
Influencing factors:
○ Scarcity of original resource
○ New technologies create new opportunities for recycling
○ Reuse cheaper/more energy efficient than production
○ Socially unacceptable degradation of environment by disposal
Types:
a. Produces primary resource
○ Back into the same original source material
○ Examples: metal, glass
b. Produces secondary resource
○ Resource for production of new source material
○ Examples: paper, plastic: wood–paper–paper or other paper based products
7. Waste disposal:
“Something which the owner no longer wants at a given place or time and which has no current or
perceived market value.”
○ Material resources that have been extracted from the environment, now deemed of no further use to individuals and society.
○ Flows of energy resulting from human activities that are not worth using (e.g. waste heat from power stations).
○ Attributes of the environment that are not valued.
Sink
“Part of the environment used for the disposal of valueless material”
Examples?
* Garbage–Landfill
* Processed sewage–Water * Exhausts– Atmosphere
8. Waste assimilation into environment
i. Organic waste–compost–soil
ii. Waste water–purification–clean water

Question 2

Summary

* The resource cycle shows how we use natural resources. 
* The resource cycle has eight distinct processes/phases 
* The sizes of the fluxes in the resource cycle depend on the resource and how we use it  Recycling practices depend on a range of different economic and human factors (e.g., scarcity, cost, social norms)