In the 2017 FIKEA application, we associated the TUBATECT production process with Europe\’s ecological priorities – \”efficient control of excessive noise, efficient waste management systems, nature and biodiversity protection programs and implementation of a green infrastructure\”, as well as reducing pressure on the environment in the urban area and neighboring areas, such as traffic (to the landfill), the restriction of natural ecosystems (by occupying garbage pits), industrial pollution and waste, and energy consumed (for garbage incineration, transport).
Also, through that application, we proposed 3 objectives, which denote the impact and similarity of our upcycling action with ecosystem measures / typical functions found in biological systems:
Reducing the amount of waste simply thrown into the environment, with the harmful effects of pollution of the different layers of the biosphere and the destruction of natural habitats.
- Intelligent recovery of products that are apparently at the end of their life, through reuse, recycling, grinding, returning them to the state of raw material, and, of course, upcycling.
- Waste is a resource, but when you can reuse it with simple, non-consumptive processes (of time, energy, transport, etc.), it is all the more valuable.
- Simplifying separation operations at source, by creating and expanding mechanisms and opportunities for selective collection and quality control, at different age levels, in a complex process of educating the citizen in parallel with separation. (FIKEA 2017 application, together with Asura Association).
- The grant-writing period overlapped with the research phase on ecosystem services, and thus we found synergies between them and the TUBATECT project.