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The Circular Economy in Manufacturing: where there’s waste, there’s potential
When it comes to our relationship with consumption, there’s a certain irony attached.
Before the 20th century, we were driven by a culture of reuse where repairing, repurposing and valuing items was the norm because goods were expensive and resources were scarce. Fast forward a century, and doesn’t that sound eerily familiar?
It’s almost comical that the seeds of “throwaway living” were sown as far back as the 1920s with the introduction of planned and dynamic obsolescence. Creators began intentionally limiting the lifespan of products or forcing regular updates to make older models feel outdated. This shift, followed by the consumerism boom of the 1950s and the plastics revolution, truly popularised disposable products. Now, as we struggle with soaring costs, finite resources and stringent regulations, we’re urgently trying to return to the pre-20th-century mindset, effectively hitting the rewind button on nearly 100 years of convenient, yet unsustainable, habits.
When it comes to manufacturing, the story is not so dissimilar. However, losses are frequently designed by default. Excess heating and cooling compensate for inefficiencies elsewhere, warm air and steam are vented because there’s no widely recognised use for them, and water is treated to drinking quality standards (or worse, simply disposed of) only to be used in applications that don’t require it. None of this happens through negligence, but it happens because the original processes or systems were for throughput, not reuse.
Yet small changes can make a significant difference to value. Excess heat can be captured and redirected to support low-temperature hot water or adjacent processes. Cooling demand can be reduced through better insulation and process optimisation, rather than more energy input. Water can be used once, treated appropriately, and looped back into operations, or replaced entirely with harvested rainwater where potable quality simply isn’t needed. These are all movements toward a circular model.
Seen through this lens, waste isn’t an inevitable by-product of manufacturing, but a design challenge. And design challenges, once recognised, are solvable.
Ready to explore how the circular economy can benefit your business? Download Veolia’s Circular Economy Guide for practical strategies, success stories, and insights to help you build a more profitable and sustainable manufacturing operation.
Web page: https://www.veolia.co.uk/insights/insights/how-transition-your-business-circular-economy