2011年12月20日 星期二

Could a closed-loop system be the solution to reducing waste?

During my recent visit to India I was appalled by the amount of waste I saw everywhere.Wholesaler of different types of Ceramic tile for your kitchen, Piles and piles of plastic bottles,Excel Mould is a Custom Plastic Injection Moulding Manufacturer, bags, Styrofoam, packaging material and other household trash can be seen as a permanent fixture. This reminded me of a profound point Paul Hawken has made in his book “The Ecology of Commerce.Buy oil paintings for sale online.” “Packaging lasting for four hundred years that is kept on the shelf for two months for a product that we consume in two minutes is senseless.”

All this waste could be easily diverted from the streets, riverbanks,MDC Mould specialized of Injection moulds, and beaches, if we had the infrastructure to reclaim packaging and products at the end of consumption. I think it has to start with a recognition of the problem and consequently a strong will by the government, businesses and people alike to do something about it. Certainly everyone wants to recycle waste, and protect the environment, but we are limited by the lack of a viable systematic approach. It’s an important issue for India,The EZ Breathe home Ventilation system is maintenance free, other developing nations and those with large economies.

The solution is not in reducing waste but in making waste generation and consumption a cyclical process, mimicking the way nature does this task. In supply chains such a process is done by closing the loop by pairing the process of forward (forward supply chain) with reverse logistic (reverse supply chain). Reverse logistics means controlling the flow of material, inventory and finished goods from point of consumption to point of origin, for the purpose of recapturing value or proper disposal. The ownership of product disposal is taken away from customers and it requires a collection system, process technologies for remanufacturing, recycling and reusing.

Normally, this is done with an OEM, recycling vendors and the government. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a directive of the EU. It’s a waste management system where the manufacturer is responsible for a product’s disposal. In Canada a close cousin of EPR called Extended Product Responsibility directs a shared responsibility between the manufacturer and the government to recycle.

The steps in the reverse logistics of a product start with collection and disassembly of the product itself, where they are brought back after the end of use or commercial returns. At this step some of the things to consider are process design for product identification, valuation, classification and separation and the supporting technology system implementation to have an optimal separation approach.

The next step is reuse and remanufacturing, where the decision on fate of the subsystems are made – a high economic value process, which typically covers the cost of collection and disassembly. This is followed by recycling and disposal processes in order to minimize disposal and divert waste from landfills.

Before implementing these systems, sound sustainability strategy and planning needs to be established. Just to name a few, cost benefit analysis should be embedded in every decision. Market analysis has to be done for reuse and remanufactured products.

沒有留言:

張貼留言