• Author(s)
    Hamilton Ortiz
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What are the optimal boundaries of local reuse actions?

This white paper documents the outcomes of a discussion session about upcycling and reuse. The discussion session was planned as a questionnaire and an interactive research workshop. The participants contribute with several parts of this document.
The main objective of this initial research is to define characteristics and key aspects for developing upcycling facilities in different contexts. The methodology included a sequence of preliminary evaluations in an organized logic: 1) a general review of the macroeconomic flow of materials and goods, 2) a general review of production and manufacturing capacities by macro-region, technical-professional needs and issues for reuse facilities, 3) mapping and classification of existing initiatives. 4) characteristics and boundaries of the initiatives, 5) priority definitions by multi-criteria assessment. 6) preliminary impact-estimation of reuse facilities in the focused-topics and scales and finally 7) mapping of barriers and leverages to scale up reuse centres worldwide. The methodology itself is a research result, which can be completed and worked further.
The workshop was based in some premises, as a framework of previous academic and experimental works. Examples of upcycling products developed by the author were explained to the participants, and a repository of them is available in a Photo Gallery.

As outcomes, we had: i) classification of objects for upcycling interventions (Table 1) and considerations about local waste generation, ii) identification of target professions of actors to be engaged (Table 2), iii) identification and classification of existing initiatives (Table 3), iv) proposals of two models of reuse facilities for specifics contexts and scales (Table 4), and quantification of capital and variable costs for its implementation (Table5), and v) preliminary proposal for impact estimation and priority definitions for scaling-up the reuse centres.

Future work and additional paths to action are presented along the text.

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