Kinder-Uni 2025: Motto "Recycling"

How can wastewater be recycled?
Prof. Dr. Thomas Dockhorn | Institute for Urban Water Management 

The water in the toilet does it, just like the rainwater on the street or the colorful bathwater: everything disappears into the drain or gutter. And then? Surely you have heard before that the wastewater flows into a sewage treatment plant. There, many good bacteria ensure that the impurities are broken down again and the dirty water becomes clean again. That is not only good for the environment, but in the treatment plant one can also filter out many useful raw materials from the wastewater. 

In this lecture we clarify the questions of which valuable materials are recovered from the wastewater and how one can make wastewater so clean again that one can water plants with it or even drink it. For every drop counts.

Why can we use waste as material for art?
Prof. Folke Köbberling | Institute for Architecture-Related Art 

Every day, people all over the world throw away many things – that is tons of rubbish. In Germany alone, each person produces about one large bag per day of paper, plastic, packaging, or broken items. And behind every piece in the rubbish hides its own story. 

Yet many things that we throw away we can still put to good use. For example, bicycles can even be manufactured from old cars, and why is virgin wool a waste product in Germany? And sometimes art even emerges from it. In the lecture, images and artworks are shown that give insight into the world of things out of which art has been made.

Why are old batteries recycled?
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Arno Kwade | Institute for Particle Technology & Battery LabFactory Braunschweig 

Imagine that we continually consume valuable raw materials for the construction of batteries. Raw materials are materials from nature that are further processed by humans in order to make things we use every day. If, for example, we build very many e-cars, then in 20 to 30 years we would have almost completely used up these raw materials. To prevent that from happening, we must recycle the used batteries and build new batteries from the recovered materials. The goal is to recover 95 % of the metals from old batteries within five years. 

Which steps are necessary to extract new materials from old batteries? What can we do so that as many batteries as possible are recycled? These and other exciting questions are answered in the lecture.