„Sustainable waste and resource management: Approaches to a global challenget“

In November 2024, a STUBE weekend seminar took place in Goslar, organised by Andreas Kurschat, the programme manager for STUBE Niedersachsen at the KED.
Immediately after arriving at the conference centre, Haus Zeppelin & Steinberg, our group travelled to MPM Environment Intelligence GmbH, located in Bad Grund, where we had a guided tour by Felix Kolbe, CEO of MPM Environment Intelligence GmbH. This is a company operating a recycling plant for electronic waste, which plays a crucial role in the context of saving natural resources.
During the guided tour, we learned in detail about the purpose of the company, what it does, what its future goals are, and what challenges it faces in its activities. The company’s activities include trading, brokerage, and storage of waste, recyclable materials, scrap metal, non-ferrous metals, and other waste. Returning to the conference centre, we had some time to get to know each other better and have an interesting evening.

The next morning, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Daniel Goldmann from TU Clausthal (University of Technology) provided us with a presentation on “Waste and Resource Management. Approaches to a Global Challenge”. During the presentation, the consumption of raw materials in different countries and circular economy in the context of the global Sustainble Development Goals (SDGs) were examined. In addition to discussing the huge amount of waste accumulated in developing and developed countries and their negative impact on the environment, the steps that are being taken within the framework of circular economy were also discussed by the professor. He pointed out how to control the large amount of raw material waste in the context of a growing world population, considering dezincification of steel scrap, mine tailings recycling and recycling of high-tech products (e.g., recycling of Li-ion batteries).

After that, as an intern at Kirchlicher Entwicklungsdienst (KED), I gave a presentation under the title “Political Implications of Resource Management”. In the context of the presentation, the harmful effects of overuse of natural resources (e.g., burning crude oil, burning coal, etc.) on people and the environment were discussed. My presentation referred to the international climate change COPs (Conferences of the Parties) as a joint political step to alleviate the situation because of climate change (especially the situation of the least developed and weakly developing countries). Finally, the possible correlation between resource competition and interstate war was shown.

Then we were treated to a guided tour of the historic Rammelsberg mining site, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. The seminar participants were introduced to the history of mining, which dates back to the Bronze Age and reaches up to the end of the 20th century. We took an underground walk, were acquainted with mining technology, how that technology worked and what the main challenges for the workers and their general working conditions had been during the centuries.

We came back to the conference centre in the evening and the participants were divided into groups which I organised as part of my internship at the KED. Each group was given some questions (regarding the topics that had been discussed during the presentations in the morning) and the participants answered the questions expressing their opinion, taking their own examples or experience, preparing for a discussion with the other groups at the same time.
The final morning, after breakfast, all the groups summarised their results of the group work, presented them and had a very creative and fruitful discussion together.

Lilit Poghosyan