Document Type

Conference Paper

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Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

2.1 CIVIL ENGINEERING

Abstract

The member states of the European Union (EU) are encountering a crisis in terms of resource availability, use and disposal of products (Miller, 2014, and Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2011). Within the EU, material recycling and waste-based energy recovery secures approximately 5 per cent of the original raw material value (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015). Arising from current high levels of personal consumption and disposal, resources in Ireland are being depleted at an unsustainable rate (Doyle & Davies, 2013). Within the EU, each person consumes, on average,13.3 tonnes(t) of materials annually (EC, 2015a). Much of this is being discarded, with an average waste production rate of 5t of total waste per person annually (EC, 2015a).


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