Day: August 19, 2021

Schoeller Allibert, a leading UK manufacturer and supplier of returnable and recyclable plastic packaging solutions, has shared insight on how it believes the retail supply chain will adapt their product lifecycle approach towards circular economies with a focus on systems that eliminate waste and embrace the use sustainable materials and energy. The business has spoken about its vision for a more sustainable and secure retail supply chain, which begins with closing the loop in intralogistics packaging. Schoeller Allibert believes that creating a robust circular economy in supply chain logistics can be made simple with a trio of considerations.

The workshop will incorporate carbon footprint evaluation and circular economy into a structural design workflow with a focus on timber structures. Through the combined use of parametric tools for structural design such as Karamba3D, and optimization tools such as Octopus, comparative strategies will be used to mediate between purely structural and environmental criteria, suggesting a more holistic design process. In the context of the climate emergency, architects and engineers try to reduce the environmental impact of structures through a shift in their design process. The use of recycled material plays a major role in this approach. One of the central questions is how can we design sustainable and smart structures by intelligently using recycled elements. Many factors such as the history of the elements, their condition, or their location influence the design, the carbon footprint, and the price. Parametric structural design tools, coupled with multi-dimensional optimization methods, can help to explore the design space and evaluate designs concerning those criteria.

Every month, around 129 billion disposable masks are used around the world. Large enterprises and independent researchers alike are now trying to come up with ways to recycle them and put them to their best possible use as an innovation. Here are the current plans and execution of the COVID-19 Mask Recycling. Australian researchers plan to turn single-use Covid masks into road material. Their research showed that using recycled face mask fibre to construct only one kilometer of the two-lane road will consume approximately 3 million masks, sparing 93 tonnes of waste from being disposed of in landfills.

Innovation and lower costs have created an insatiable human appetite for electronic devices.
The digital revolution, in recent years, has gone into overdrive, which has led consumers to purchase additional – and mostly new – electronic devices. The outdated or extra ones offer no value, and are often jettisoned. This has led to an accumulation of electronic waste (e-waste). While a digitally connected world has unprecedented virtues and warrants the ubiquitous presence of electronic devices, it is, unfortunately, helping create an escalating torrent of waste.
ADVERTISING
The numbers back the claim: the world produces as much as 50 million tonnes of e-waste a year – valued at over $62.5bn – outweighing all commercial aircraft ever constructed, a UN report in 2019 revealed.

Aldersgate Group delivers lukewarm assessment of government’s efforts to deliver a circular economy in its latest report on how to enhance resource efficiency. The economic, environmental, and social benefits of shifting from a linear model of production of consumption to a circular economy have been well documented. Overconsumption of resources in known to drive…

The Sustainable City, an eco-friendly housing development in Dubai, has installed a new electronic waste (e-waste) collection point in the community. The 24-hour e-waste drop-off station is built by Efate, an Emirati company involved in electronic and electrical waste management. Residents and the public can drop their used electronics at this station, where they will be collected and taken to a recycling facility and separated. Electronics in working condition will be donated to charity. Efate says it will also attempt to refurbish and repair items whenever possible and hand them out for free to those in need. After disassembly, useful components that contain vital raw materials are reused in manufacturing new products while unserviceable parts are crushed without causing any harmful emissions, it adds.

Chatham House has launched an online tool to facilitate the analysis of circular economy trade flows and trends. The circular economy trade data explorer uses the available data from UN Comtrade, and focuses on resources which are of particular significance to the circular economy. The data explorer organizes over 900 individual commodities into primary and secondary material categories. Primary materials include raw and intermediate bioeconomy products, including renewable resources from land and sea used for food, feed, construction, and bioenergy generation. Secondary materials covered are derived from both renewable and non-renewable resources, and include waste, scrap, and residue, secondary raw materials, and used goods.