Building a Strategic Battery Value Chain in Europe COM/2019/176 is a priority for EU policy. Europe’s current share of global cell production is only 3%, while Asia has already reached 85%. To ensure a competitive position and independence in the battery market, Europe must act quickly and comprehensively in the field of innovation, research and construction of the infrastructure needed for large-scale battery production. The recycling of used batteries can have a significant role in ensuring EU access to raw materials. In the coming years, a very rapid development of the battery and rechargable battery market is forecast throughout the EU. In the above context, the recycling of used batteries plays an important role not only because of their harmful content and environmental impact, or adverse impact on human health and life, but also the ability to recover many valuable secondary raw materials and combine them in the battery life cycle (Horizon 2010 Work Programme 2018–2020 (European Commission Decision C(2019) 4575 of 2 July 2019)). In Poland, more than 80% of used batteries are disposable batteries, which, together with municipal waste, end up in a landfill and pose a significant threat to the environment. This paper examines scenarios and directions for development of the battery recycling market in Poland based on the analysis of sources of financing, innovations as well as economic and legal changes across the EU and Poland concerning recycling of different types of batteries and rechargable batteries.

This article presents the results of studies into the phase and chemical composition of blast furnace slag in the context of its reuse. In practice, blast furnace slags are widely used in the construction industry and road building as a basis for the production of, for example, cements, road binders and slag bricks. T hey are also used in the production of concrete floors, mortars, and plasters. Blast furnace slag is mainly used as a valuable material in the production of hydraulic binders, especially cement that improves the mechanical properties of concretes.
The favorable physical and mechanical properties of slags, apart from economic aspects, are undoubtedly an asset when deciding to use them instead of natural raw materials. In addition to the above, there is also the ecological aspect, since by using waste materials, the environmental interference that occurs during the opencast mining of natural aggregates is reduced. S pecifically, this means waste utilization through secondary management.
However, it should be kept in mind that it is a material which quite easily and quickly responds to environmental changes triggered by external factors; therefore, along with the determination of its physical and mechanical properties, its phase and chemical composition must be also checked.
The studies showed that the predominant component of the blast furnace slag is glass which can amount up to 80%. In its vicinity, metallic precipitate as well as crystallites of periclase, dicalcium silicates and quartz can be found. With regard to the chemical composition of the slag, it was concluded that it meets the environmental and technical requirements regarding unbound and hydraulically bound mixtures. In case of the latter, in terms of its chemical composition, the slag meets the hydraulic activity category CA3. It also meets the chemical requirements for using it as a valuable addition to mortars and concretes, and it is useful in the production of CEM II Portland-composite cement, CEM III blast-furnace cement and CEM V composite cements. The blast furnace slag is a valuable raw material for cement production. Cement CEM III/C contains 81–95% of blast furnace slag in accordance with E N 197-1:2012. In 2019, the Polish cement industry used 1,939,387.7 tons of slag.

Cognitive Linguistics provides theoretical and methodological framework for a description of conceptual structure of signed languages. Articulation parameters of individual signs, such as hand-shape, location, motion, and orientation, all contribute to the creation of complex non-literal meanings. Being based on metaphors, metonymies, or metonymies-in-metaphor, the signs reflect various degrees of visual motivation or iconicity. American Sign Language (henceforth ASL) and British Sign Language (henceforth BSL), two unrelated languages, employ diverse strategies of conceptualisation to express the same concepts. These strategies range from identical, e.g. metaphor vs. metaphor, to different, e.g. metaphor vs. metonymy, with many intermediate configurations possible. The paper compares selected ASL and BSL signs related to various areas of experience. Some of the signs are also contrasted with their counterparts in other signed languages.

Michael Burawoy’s idea of public sociology instigated a heated debate about the purpose of sociological research and bestowed its author an important place among contemporary social thinkers. The article presents the intellectual path that led Burawoy to formulate his well-known idea. Starting from his first book, he developed a coherent and original theory that was indebted to Marxism but was reaching beyond its horizons. Through grounding his conceptual work in sociological field research, Burawoy created his own understanding of such concepts as class, interest or production. By linking the participant observation of workplaces’ local regimes with the global political dynamics of social systems, the theory of sociological Marxism paved the way to formulating the new idea of sociology. Burawoy’s sociology aims at combining a realistic investigation in the interests and dispositions of social actors with utopian imaginaries of contemporary culture.

The aim of this article is to present the relation between Christianity and Japanese culture. The problem here is not the concept of Christianity, but the concept of Japanese culture. In the Japanese thought is hard to distinguish between religion and philosophy. Philosophy, religion and culture are synonyms for “philosophy of life”. The original Japanese philosophy is Shinto and received from China Confucianism, and Buddhism. In the case of Christianity we have to consider Catholic Church and Orthodox Church. Special attention we have to pay to the process of inculturation of the Good news in the Japanese soil.