Sustainable Business: Recovery and Recycling

Recovery and Recycling

• Recovery and recycling are crucial for sustainable business models.
• Businesses generate a lot of waste, incurring disposal costs.
• This waste can be a profitable revenue stream if reprocessed.

Preliminary Statistics

• Eurostat provides data on the circular economy, including recovery and recycling.
• The data platform offers various resources like monitoring, databases, visualisations and publications.

Participation

• To participate in data collection, visit wooclap.com and enter the event code.
• An event code is needed to access the platform.

Why Recover and Recycle?

• Global competition necessitates resource protection and reuse.
• Resources are costly and efficient resource management is important.
• Converting identified and collected waste into reusable items is a process reducing waste.

Recovering Waste and By-Products

• Metals and glass can be recovered infinitely.
• Paper can be recovered up to 4 times.
• Plastic recovery depends on composition and can be harder.
• Fabric recovery varies depending on the fabric type, ranging between 2 and 5 times.
• Recyclability depends on municipality policies and reseller agreements.
• Some products labeled recyclable may not have the technology (machinery) for recycling in a certain area.
• The combined materials in a product increase the difficulties and costs for recycling.
• Separating materials involves time, energy, and monetary resources.

Upcycling

• Upcycling converts old products into more valuable items.
• New technologies and two-way supply chains enable companies to recover more resources.

Upcycling vs Recycling vs Downcycling

• Upcycling increases value, maintaining material integrity.
• Recycling maintains value, converting materials into equivalent value forms.
• Downcycling decreases value, producing items of lower value compared to the source materials.

Industrial Symbiosis

• Sharing by-products between industries allows for closed-loop recycling.
• Products are re-processed into other products without resource loss.
• It helps reuse waste to conserve resources and reduce costs.

Cradle to Cradle (C2C)

• C2C represents a registered trademark associated with McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry.
• The term was coined in the 1970s by Walter R. Stahel.
• It involves a system for material health, climate protection, water and soil stewardship, and social fairness.

Benefits of the R&R Model

• Costs: Reduces compliance and waste management costs.
• Revenue: Increases revenue from selling unwanted outputs.
• Impact: Diminishes environmental impact due to lower demands for virgin resources and energy.
• Customers: Provides convenient options for customers to dispose of unwanted products.
• B2C: Enables new business interactions between companies and customers, linking disposal with new product purchases.
• Development: Deeper insights into the disposal process will improve product design for efficiency and recyclability.
• Lower Bill: Provides savings by switching from primary to secondary resources.

Zero Waste

• Companies should aspire towards zero waste by redesigning materials and processes to recover residual materials as valuable resources.

Recovery & Recycling Operations

• A circular flow diagram illustrating the entire process of production, reuse, and recycling, including trading, recovery channel, product use, reproccessing.

Variations of R&R Model

• Recovering end-of-life products: Recapturing value in closed loops (company's products) or open loops (any company's products).
• Recovering waste and by-products: Recapturing value from company's production processes.

Recovery & Recycling Closed & Open Loop

• Illustrates the closed-loop cycle (within one company) and the open-loop cycle (between companies) for recovery.

R&R Cases

• Illustrative examples of successful recovery and recycling initiatives.

Worldwide I:CO

• International provider of circular solutions for clothing and shoe recycling.
• Develops recycling technologies.
• Provides systems for managing product responsibility and circularity.
• Works with various stakeholders to recycle and reuse materials.

Too Good To Go

• Focus Innovation Award 2020 winner.
• Aims to reduce food waste and global emissions.
• Collaborates with restaurateurs and customers to save food and cut costs.
• Provides a practical solution for implementing circular models tailored to individual businesses.
• The company is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark.
• Has offices in various European countries.