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Toward Circular Economy and Social Equity
Published in Ravindra Sharma, Geeta Rana, Shivani Agarwal, Entrepreneurial Innovations, Models, and Implementation Strategies for Industry 4.0, 2023
The linear take-make-dispose production model is not sustainable in the long run due to supply and price risks associated with using virgin materials, the increasing trend of consumers preferring environmentally and socially responsible products, and stricter regulatory pressures (Moreno, Braithwaite, & Cooper, 2014). In contrast, the circular model offers potential opportunities for sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs to add more value by creating circulating assets for more extended and intensified product usage (Park, Sarkis, & Wu, 2010). The circular economy (CE) follows the closed-loop material flow, emphasizing the restorative or regenerative industrial system, where natural capital is used and reused as efficiently as possible. The three essential methods of closed-loop material flow are “reduce, reuse, and recycle” (3R). Reducing involves minimizing inputs in the value-adding process (supply) and consumer’s consumption (demand). Reusing means using the waste obtained from a value-adding process as a raw material for another process. Recycling involves the transformation of used material into another product. McDonough and Braungart (2002) argued that 3R methods based on the ‘cradle-to-grave’ principle might not be good enough to achieve a circular and sustainable economy. They suggested two methods – downcycling and upcycling – that work on the radical principle of cradle-to-cradle. Downcycling means producing new lower-value products than the original ones through recycling methods. Upcycling involves recycling that adds new value to the recycled materials or items.
Introduction
Published in Paul Micklethwaite, Beyond Recycling, 2021
Recycling is presented uncritically as the right thing to do. In the workplace, at home and in public spaces we are told to recycle. Organisations, governments and cities have recycling targets, and we must play our part to ensure these are met. To not recycle is therefore to fail, and be judged. We are compelled to participate in recycling by a combination of moral responsibility, and the twin threats of financial penalty and social disapproval if we do not comply. Yet the mantra of the 3Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle – tells us that recycling should be a last resort, rather than a first choice, when it comes to dealing with waste. In our rush to recycle, we have forgotten that prevention is better than cure, especially when the proposed cure does not work. Recycling does not, and cannot, work as a meaningful response to the sheer scale of our production of waste. The volume of material we produce that requires recycling is not matched by the recycled products that we buy. There are few examples of successfully closing the loop on material use. Most recycling is ‘downcycling’ – turning waste into material of lower quality and value. It is not just the volume, but the rate at which we produce waste that is the problem, and recycling does not offer to slow this down. Recycled things can be deceiving, giving us false hope that they embody a sufficient response to what we throw out. Endless variations on the recycling symbol offer reassurance that all will magically be taken care of further down the line. We therefore feel good about recycling.
Waste
Published in Sigrun M. Wagner, Business and Environmental Sustainability, 2020
Beyond reducing the overall amount of waste, waste is increasingly seen as a resource that can be reused and recycled, as demonstrated by some of the earlier examples. McDonough and Braungart (2002) refer to this as “waste equals food” – akin to natural food chains where there is no waste, as organisms at one level provide nutrition for organisms at another level (Anderson 1998). They propose to replace the downcycling often found in recycling with upcycling, i.e. converting waste products into higher value products rather than degrading them (Nemetz 2013).
On a voyage of recovery: a review of the UK’s resource recovery from waste infrastructure
Published in Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 2019
A further evolution of the industry’s function is in progress, from ensuring safe disposal to a focus on resource recovery, including retention of materials through reuse, recovery of materials through recycling or composting, and recovery of energy including the production of waste-derived fuels (Institution of Civil Engineers [ICE], 2016). This is driven by social and legislative pressure to move towards a ‘circular economy’. The linear model of resource consumption relies on continued availability of virgin materials, which are in finite supply. As these resources become scarce, the economic and environmental costs of extracting them both rise exponentially, countries may become vulnerable to material security issues, and the linear model becomes unsustainable. In a circular economy, technical products and materials are designed to be reused and recycled with minimal energy input while biological materials are designed to be non-toxic and compostable, eliminating wastes as we currently view them.1 There is a greater focus on preserving the service or utility that materials and products provide (e.g. by leasing rather than purchase), keeping products in service for longer (by designing for upgradeability and refurbishment) and ‘closing the loop’ (making sure that at the end of a product’s life, its constituent materials are wholly recycled into products of equal or greater value). Current recycling practices predominantly produce reprocessed material only suitable for ‘lower-grade’ applications – i.e. for products of less value or utility compared with the products from which the recyclate is sourced, so-called downcycling – and thus demand for virgin materials remains higher than that for recycled materials. The first step towards a close-to-circular economy will require the elimination of downcycling and thus reverse this balance of demand.
Upcycling textile wastes: challenges and innovations
Published in Textile Progress, 2021
Zunjarrao Kamble, Bijoya Kumar Behera
The other recycling routes are upcycling and downcycling. When the product developed from recycled material has a higher value or quality than the original product, it is termed upcycling and vice versa for downcycling. Another classification of textile recycling routes is closed- or open-loop recycling. When material from a product is recycled and used to produce similar products, it is termed closed-loop recycling whereas when the material from a product is recycled and used to produce another product, it is termed open-loop recycling.
Engineering the transition to sustainability
Published in Australian Journal of Multi-Disciplinary Engineering, 2020
Most of the current approaches to recycling are actually downcycling (Korhonen, Honkasalo, and Seppälä 2018), e.g. the conversion of plastics or paper to lower quality products, a process that can only recur a few times. This process only delays the eventual loss of the resource. The approach championed by McDonough and Braungart in Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (2002) relies on the concept of ‘biological’ and ‘technical nutrients’. In nature, biological nutrients are retained in an endless cycle of transformation involving the creation and decomposition of living tissue. Many of the products that presently use mineral resources, such as single use plastics that are mainly responsible for the environmental crisis in our oceans (Andrady 2015), can be substituted with natural polymers (from plant and animal derived materials), biomass based, compostable, synthetic biopolymers and re-usable durable non-plastic materials (Kershaw 2018). Such materials will be recycled by nature. It is not so simple with products that incorporate multiple mineral or hydrocarbon-based materials. Although it is physically possible to separate the elements at the end of life (e.g. in electronic equipment), to do so would use significant amounts of (presently fossil fuelled) energy and potentially release toxic chemicals into the environment. McDonough and Braungart’s solution to this problem is for products to be made of so-called ‘technical nutrients’ that can be re-used in the same way that nature re-uses ‘biological nutrients’. As an example of this the authors cite Philips’ Econova television which was released in 2010, and was designed for ‘almost complete disassembly’ (Braungart and McDonough 2013). The cradle-to-cradle (C2C) concept has spawned The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute8, that administers the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Product Standard. At the time of writing over 400 products have been certified.