When Environmental Legacy Becomes a Resource: On the Entanglement of Valorization and Knowledge Practices

• In Event: STS Underground - I: Mining Knowledge Practices

Abstract

Recycling and extracting secondary resources from dumped materials has been considered as an option for generating a supply of critical minerals. Materials that are understood as secondary resources were already in use in society, but became devaluated and have been discarded as useless and worthless. We argue that the process of valorization that shifts material from the category of ‘worthless’ to the category of ‘valuable’ is a prerequisite for the making of secondary resources and the development of innovative technologies.
We conceptualize valorization as a social process of (re-)framing in which the collective understanding of waste materials changes. Valorization leads to a new interpretation of waste, risky materials, or environmental legacies as valuable resources.
Within this presentation we will reveal how valorization processes are entangled with scientific, administrative, commercial, and cultural knowledge practices. Based on a German case study of technology development for the extraction of critical minerals from mining residues we will show on the one hand, how scientific knowledge about resource processing, administrative knowledge about environmental contaminations, knowledge about cultural heritage, and daily experience and knowledge of people that live in the region interact in the valorization processes. We will demonstrate the relevance of interruptions in regional history in this regard. On the other hand we will show how valorization in turn impacts knowledge practices, e.g. requires the recognition and integration of local knowledge practices into research for innovative mining technologies or modifies risk assessment practices of environmental administration.

Authors

• Alena Bleicher, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, GmbH

• Martin David, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ

• Henriette Rutjes, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ