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Futures
Published in Paul Micklethwaite, Beyond Recycling, 2021
The Cradle-to-Cradle design protocol focuses on maintaining healthy and distinct material cycles. It seeks to design-out waste by identifying which of two metabolisms any material we use should enter at the end of a product’s life. ‘Biological nutrients’ are products of nature, which can return to natural systems for reprocessing. ‘Technical nutrients’ are synthetic products of human manufacture, which must be kept in a technical metabolism managed by us (McDonough & Braungart, 2002). It may even be possible to improve the quality of human-made technical materials, via upcycling, if they are kept within their own closed systems (McDonough & Braungart, 2013). Pollution occurs when technical nutrients enter the biological metabolism. Natural systems cannot process or safely absorb human-made products such as oil-based plastics. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch refers to an ever-increasing mass of floating debris brought together by global ocean currents. There is no single ‘garbage patch’, but constantly moving concentrations and combinations of marine debris, much of it plastic, in the North Pacific Ocean (National Ocean Service, 2020). Plastic products will eventually disintegrate when exposed to the forces of nature, but they only reduce into smaller pieces; they will not be accepted into nature’s material cycles.
Waste and Pollution
Published in John C. Ayers, Sustainability, 2017
The waste hierarchy is the order of effectiveness of waste and pollution reduction strategies, which from highest to lowest are prevent, reduce, reuse, recycle, energy recovery, and disposal. The most effective and economical approach, pollution prevention (P2), seeks to increase the efficiency of processes such as industrial production and consumer consumption to reduce pollution (see http://www.epa.gov/p2/). It includes the use of green chemistry to prevent pollution by substituting nonhazardous for hazardous chemicals in industrial processes. Cradle-to-cradle design is used to create resource efficient products with minimal waste production over the entire life cycle (McDonough and Braungart 2002). Pollution prevention can also use methods from industrial ecology, which studies material and energy flows in industrial systems and finds holistic methods for increasing material and energy use efficiency.
Supply chain management for sustainability
Published in Sigrun M. Wagner, Business and Environmental Sustainability, 2020
Cradle-to-cradle design takes sustainability into account across the whole lifetime of a product, and is an example of a circular economy approach. Whilst we have introduced the concept in Chapters 3 and 4 and return to it in the following chapter on design and productions, we highlight its relevance for the supply chain here. Differentiating between biodegradable biological nutrients and recyclable technical ones allows firms to source materials and design products that are easy to disassemble and to recover (EMF 2013). Restoring technical nutrients is a core objective of reverse logistics (Grant et al. 2017).
Nature inspired supply chain solutions: definitions, analogies, and future research directions
Published in International Journal of Production Research, 2020
Nazli Turken, Vincent Cannataro, Avinash Geda, Ashutosh Dixit
Biomimicry and its applications have been explored in many areas ranging from engineering to chemistry, biotechnology, and textiles (Benyus and Pauli 2009; Benyus 1997; Eadie and Ghosh 2011; Swiegers 2012; Volstad and Boks 2012; Winston 2014). Specifically, biomimicry in supply chains has been discussed under the umbrella of sustainable supply chains, an area that has been growing since the 1980s (Souza 2012; Kunreuther and Kleindorfer 1980). The cradle-to-cradle design, a biomimetic approach to product design in which all materials from production are recycled by nature or industry, emerged from a goal to create industrial systems that emulate waste-free eco-systems (McDonough and Braungart 2010) and has been adopted by numerous firms (Hessman 2014). However, the application of biomimicry in supply chains extends beyond product design and sustainability. By recognising the similarities between human supply chains and biological systems, we can delve into a massive pool of solutions to various complex issues. The analogous evolution of these two systems is clear: traits that confer a competitive advantage, i.e. make an organism more efficient at living and reproducing, are naturally selected and persist, and supply chains that increase efficiency also increase their competitive advantage and are selected to persist.