Using Circular Economy for manufacturing

While concepts like Industry 4.0 are already gaining momentum in the field of manufacturing, a new strategy called ‘circular economy’ is now being focused on. In this interview with Huned Contractor, Dr. Rajkumar Kasilingam, Director, Indian Rubber Manufacturers Research Association, elaborates about what it means

Q. In a manufacturing scenario, what is the importance of ‘circular economy’?

To begin with, it is very important to understand the role of manufacturing with regards to sustainability. This involves two factors: environment and human health. A stable economy is one that uses energy and resources efficiently. And it is here that the significance of circular economy comes to the fore. What is circular economy? It is defined as an alternative to a traditional linear economy (make, use, dispose) in which we keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them whilst in use, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of each service life.

In simpler terms, a circular economy seeks to replace today’s linear approach to resources, in which materials are made into products, the products are used and then the materials are thrown away. Therefore, a circular economy aims to continuously keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value. Circular economy thinking includes strategies such as redefining products and services.

For example:

1. Offering a product on a service basis or extending its lifespan.
2. Using renewable energy.
3. Using renewable, recyclable or biodegradable resources.
4. Promoting collaborative consumption.
5. Creating symbiotic relationships where the waste of an industry becomes the input of the other.

Linear ‘take, make, dispose’ industrial processes, and the lifestyles dependent on them, use up finite reserves to create products with a finite lifespan, which end up in landfills or in incinerators. The circular approach, by contrast, takes insights from living systems. It considers that our systems should work like organisms, processing nutrients that can be fed back into the cycle — whether biological or technical — hence the ‘closed loop’ or ‘regenerative’ terms usually associated with it. The generic circular economy label can be applied to or claimed by several different schools of thought, but all of them gravitate around the same basic principles.

Q. How did this concept originate?

One prominent thinker on the topic is Walter Stahel, an architect, economist, and a founding father of industrial sustainability. Credited with having coined the expression ‘cradle to cradle’ (in contrast with ‘cradle to grave’, illustrating our ‘resource to waste’ way of functioning), in the late 1970s, Stahel worked on developing a closed loop approach to production processes, co-founding the Product-Life Institute in Geneva. In the UK, Steve Parker researched waste as a resource in the UK agricultural sector in 1982, developing novel closed-loop production systems. These systems mimicked and worked with the biological ecosystems they exploited.

Q. What are the advantages of circular economy?

There are several advantages of a circular economy. According to researchers like Van Buren and others, the advantages of a circular economy approach can be divided into three major categories. The production processes in this setup require significantly less newly produced or mined raw materials. Consequently, these processes become less sensitive to the growing scarcity of many raw materials and suffer less from uncertainty due to the instable and strategic geopolitics of supplying countries, aimed at gaining more influence on consuming countries. This tends to outweigh the increase in uncertainty related to adequately organising the reverse supply chain process. Further, it has the potential to generate innovations and new employment opportunities in the so called eco-industry, based on the development and application of eco-technology, as well as the potential to geographically shift back outsourced activities to national economies, in processes labelled as ‘local mining’, ‘near sourcing’ or ‘reshoring’.

Q. Have there been any positive outcomes?

In the past decade, the eco-industry has more than doubled in size in Europe. The reduction of environmental damage has been due to less extraction of raw materials, less fossil energy use and significantly smaller waste disposal problems. As per a study, the top 10 benefits of a circular economy approach to your organisation are:

1. Save your business, customers, and suppliers’ money.
2. Capture more value from your materials and resources.
3. Develop new markets and gain new customers.
4. Build loyalty with your customer base.
5. Satisfy changing customer needs and expectations.
6. Increase the security and price stability of your supply chain.
7. Attract, retain, and engage your employees.
8. Build your brand and reputation as an innovative organisation.
9. Exceed government regulations and stay ahead of new requirements.
10. Provide more return and lower risk to your investors.

Q. Can you illustrate with examples from your field of specialisation, that is, the rubber industry?

Let us look at circular economy through an example. Reclaimed rubber can be put to various uses. This includes making products like new tyres, inner tubes, sealing parts, tyre retreading material, rubber hoses, shoe soles, conveyor belts, rubber mats or tiles, etc. Another example is that of leading tyre manufacturer Michelin that has developed the ‘4R’ strategy that respects the environment. These comprise ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Renew’ for an ecologically-viable circular economy that consumes less carbon, energy, and natural resources. In concrete terms, the 4R solution means reducing CO2 consumption with lighter tyres, which last longer and save fuel; reusing by repairing, re-grooving, and retreading tyres to make them last longer; recycling and recovering used tyres; renewing by using renewable raw materials such as natural rubber, biosourced isoprene and butadiene, and natural oils and resins, etc.

Q. What is ‘green chemistry’?

This brings us to the subject of ‘green chemistry’. Essentially, it means preventing pollution before it happens rather than cleaning up the mess later. Green chemistry is the utilisation of a set of principles that reduces or eliminates the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture and application of chemical products. It is about waste minimisation at source; use of catalysts in place of reagents; using non-toxic reagents; use of renewable resources; improved atom efficiency; use of solvent-free or recyclable environmentally benign solvent systems.

Q. What is the approach of this concept?

The approach is to develop chemical processes and earth-friendly products that will prevent pollution in the first place. Through the practice of green chemistry, we can create alternatives to hazardous substances. We can design chemical processes that reduce waste and reduce demand on diminishing resources. The concept of green chemistry was developed in the business and regulatory communities as a natural evolution of pollution prevention initiatives. In our efforts to improve crop protection, commercial products and medicines, we also caused unintended harm to our planet and humans. By the mid-20th century, some of the long-term negative effects of these advancements could not be ignored. Pollution choked many of the world’s waterways and acid rain deteriorated forest health. There were measurable holes in the earth’s ozone. Some chemicals in common use were suspected of causing or directly linked to human cancer and other adverse human and environmental health outcomes. Many governments began to regulate the generation and disposal of industrial wastes and emissions. The United States formed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970, which was charged with protecting human and environmental health through setting and enforcing environmental regulations. Green chemistry takes the EPA’s mandate a step further and creates a new reality for chemistry and engineering by asking chemists and engineers to design chemicals, chemical processes and commercial products in a way that, at the very least, avoids the creation of toxics and waste.

Q. Have any practical steps been taken in this direction?

This is a field open for innovation, new ideas, and revolutionary progress. For example, steps have been taken to develop new synthetic routes, remove arsenic and chromate from pressure-treated wood, develop new pesticides that are not harmful to humans, develop new oxidants for bleaching paper and disinfecting water, remove the content of lead from automobile paints, create recyclable carpeting, replace VOCs and chlorinated solvents, and develop biodegradable polymers from renewable resources.