Companies have come under considerable pressure to reduce the amount of waste they produce, either through prevention, or by developing strategies that allow for a valuable use of produced waste. A substantial part of the industrial waste is thus used for recycling. Incinerated waste can, at the end of the day, produce a quantity of usable thermal energy.
These techniques, though, also have their drawbacks. Recycling calls for a significant energy supply in order to obtain a useful product. If during incineration some energy can be regain, the raw material, though, is entirely lost. In the series of eco-friendly industrial waste-processing techniques, there is one that, unjustly, receives only poor attention: re-use.
When waste is re-used it lives another life in a use that is identical or similar to the one for which the product or material was initially destinated. The processing requires only limited external energy supply. When potentially re-useable waste or "left-overs" are actually employed by another company, one does not only avoid squandering: both parties eventually take benefit. The waste-producer avoids the substantial cost for disposal or incineration, while the re-user obtains an almost costless raw material.
Based on these considerations, four people from Brussels created Rotor, a platform for the endorsement of industrial waste re-use. Rotor wants, among other things, to encourage contacts between producers of "interesting" waste and potential re-users from the field of industry, design or architecture.
