At the direction of the President, a system of projects is being launched aimed at the rational use of man-made raw materials accumulated in Russia. The Agency for Strategic Initiatives together with the Rusnano company will organize work at four sites – in the Murmansk, Moscow and Tula regions, as well as in the Republic of Bashkortostan. Each region has chosen its own direction of development: Bashkortostan will focus on extracting gold and copper components from reclaimed sites, the Murmansk region will deal with the processing of metallurgical production residues, the Moscow region will specialize in the extraction of rare earth elements from phosphogypsum reserves, and the Tula region will process ash and slag materials to produce expanded clay and construction products.
The scale of the problem is impressive. There are over 100 billion tons of industrial waste in the country, occupying an area of 1600 square meters. km. If current rates continue, by mid-century the amount of waste could double and the land space it uses could increase fivefold. At the same time, the majority of this waste (more than 4/5) can be reused for economic purposes, which makes recycling a profitable business. Financial support for projects is planned to be obtained from investment, including from companies that produced the waste and from new investors.
Government support creates a favorable environment. The Ministry of Natural Resources announced its readiness to provide legal assistance and expedite procedures for obtaining rights to use sites. Significant amendments have been made in recent years into the legal framework, which allow organizations using subsoil to extract useful contents from accumulated dumps without obtaining additional permits. An innovative “rediscovery” mechanism has been created, which allows investors to reclassify an existing exploration license into a production license after registering the volume of the deposit in the state accounting system. The state’s strategic goal is to build an economic model in which, by the end of the current decade, a quarter of all production residues and consumer waste will be returned to economic circulation.
Experts point out the importance of establishing a favorable regime for business participation. The success of such work requires an integrated approach, including the development of technological solutions, the introduction of tax incentive systems, the provision of government guarantees and subsidized support.
Reorientation of production activities to the use of technogenic raw materials opens the way to the creation of a new sector of the economy, which will not only reduce environmental pressure on natural systems, but will also provide a significant increase in national wealth and employment growth in the regions.
Source: Izvestia
Photo: Global Look Press/Viktor Pogontsev/Russian Look
