Economic Optimization of Urban Mining

This paper presents a general approach when performing urban mining activities. The urban mining concept is a necessity when the Mega cities increase in numbers to create attractive, sustainable cities for modern people. There are veins of precious minerals that are richer than any goldmine, running through our cities. The equality principle is applied on urban mining in order to simultaneously optimize the economy, the technology used and the environmental conditions in general. Shadow costs are employed to give economic incentives to improve the current urban mining activities. A versatile key factor is introduced that provides management with a tool to immediately obtain a general status report of their urban mining project. A Swedish office block is the object of a case study. Thereby, special focus is on the least important fractions with a positive value from an economic point of view that are intended to be optimized. The introduced approach shows utility and the model for Efficient Use of Resources for Optimal Production Economy (EUROPE) gives reasonable results when applying the equality principle on urban mining business. The major benefit with this study is the introduction of a novel method to improve urban mining projects of all kinds featuring conversion of all technical and environmental aspects of a project into all-embracing monetary measures. It is recommended to apply the equality principle and its mathematical expression, the EUROPE model, on recycling activities in general and particularly on urban mining projects.