Die Kreislaufwirtschaft mit digitalen Technologien aufladen – von Lux Research

Sustainability is rapidly becoming a real driver for action, rather than simply a talking point meant to boost public relations. 

Companies serious about sustainability require measurable goals around reducing emissions, minimizing waste, and/or using fewer resources, as well as strategies for improving operations, helping customers, and even finding new business targets. To achieve these goals and implement these strategies, manufacturing companies are largely playing to their core strength – manufacturing – meaning they are largely testing new sustainable raw materials and alternative manufacturing processes. Among these approaches, there is great interest in recycling of waste, captured by the idea of the circular economy. 

Today, our global economy is largely linear in nature – products are made from feedstocks and then largely disposed of after the product’s lifespan. The global economy generates more than 2 billion tons of municipal solid waste, more than 1 billion tons of food waste, and about 400 million tons of plastic and textile waste each year, only a small fraction of which is recycled, often into low-value products. As this overabundance of waste wreaks havoc on local ecosystems, it has led to increased scrutiny in recent years, leading to regulatory changes across the globe including complete waste import bans in countries like China and Thailand. At the same time, international collaborations on the subject are also on the rise, as seen from the recent memorandum of understanding signed between China and the EU to jointly develop circular economy practices and policies. 

Lux defines the circular economy as one where waste can be converted to a virgin-quality feedstock or a higher-value product than with existing waste conversion technologies. Unfortunately, most technologies that convert waste to materials precursors are still at an early stage. In the course of our work, Lux has found an important yet underemphasized role for emerging digital technologies, which have the power to accelerate adoption of these circular technologies. Emerging digital technologies have the potential to unleash the full value of existing approaches or even enable completely new opportunities for circularity. Here, we discuss how emerging digital technologies can enable the circular economy in several different ways: 

1.Overcoming logistical roadblocks around raw material collection for recycling 

In today’s global economy, production and consumption are spread across the world. Over the years, supply chains have evolved to be very rigid and one-directional; they can transport raw materials from a few points of origin to a few points of production and, from there on, to consumers all over the world. Unfortunately, this also means that the same supply chains pose a significant challenge when it comes to collecting a key raw material to enable the circular economy – waste. 

Last-mile delivery technologies can help overcome some of these challenges. While originally developed to aid with delivery of packages to their final destination, many companies have already reconfigured these technologies to tackle other use cases, indicating that using them to collect waste may not be a stretch. While last-mile delivery technologies operate within the boundaries of existing supply chain networks, newer technologies promise to operate outside these boundaries. Alternately, we can bring production to where the waste is generated. Several key drivers are now pushing companies to adopt decentralized production-related technologies like factory in a box (FIAB). 

2.Sorting high-quality feedstock and tracking quality of recycled products 

One of the key challenges in establishing a circular economy is the varying regulations in different geographies around mixing waste and recycling. This makes it challenging to sort the waste and ensure that both raw materials and finished products meet quality standards. New innovations like hyperspectral and multispectral imaging, a technique that can capture electromagnetic spectra beyond the visual limit, can assist with quality control on waste feedstocks. Companies like RxAll are also using these imaging techniques as a means for product tracking and authentication, suggesting that similar techniques in combination with small quantities of tracer molecules could offer a powerful way to track the origin and quality of feedstocks as well as recycled products. Robotics can also play an important role in sorting waste, as seen in the case of ZenRobotics, which uses a range of sensors and custom robotic arms to sort metal, wood, stone, and rigid plastics from mixed construction and demolition (C&D) and commercial and industrial (C&I) waste streams

3.Separating and recycling mixed-material products 

Many products in the marketplace are made of mixed materials consisting of different types of metals, plastic, and wood, which are distributed all over the product. Such mixed- material products take the challenge of separating and sorting recycling feedstocks to a whole new level. 

Fortunately, as before, hyperspectral and multispectral imaging can help scan to-be-recycled products and identify sections of these products that are high in concentration of a desired type of feedstock material. Following that, next-generation robotic technologies can be used to pick up objects, orient them, and even precision cut them. For example, XYZ Robotics and Covariant integrate vision systems and vacuum grippers to pick and orient objects at high rates (~1,000 picks per hour) and with high accuracy (99.9%). Precision cutting robots like those from CNC Robotics and Wolf Robotics can then be used to segment the objects appropriately. 

Another interesting approach that is emerging in this space is blockchain. Many mixed-material products consist of components that are sourced from multiple tiers of suppliers. In many cases, these suppliers are reluctant to share proprietary information on the different materials used in making their components, especially if it involves sharing that information through multiple tiers of the supply chain. Fortunately, blockchain in conjunction with zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) techniques can allow vendors to share this information without compromising any proprietary knowledge – an approach that Circularise, a Netherlands-based startup, has embraced. This approach could also help with auditing recycled products at much lower costs, which is required by regulations in many countries. 

4.Enhancing yield and stability of recycling processes 

Most traditional chemical processes are designed to operate on raw materials that fall within a narrow specification. The presence of a wide range of materials and chemical constituents can pose a significant challenge to stability and yield in chemical recycling processes. 

Chemical recyclers can look to the downstream refining and chemicals industry to overcome challenges related to raw material variability. For example, Penrose, maker of advanced process control software, and Algorithmica Technologies, maker of a production optimization software, use predictive analytics and machine learning to predict feedstock quality and optimize process operating parameters accordingly. 

5.Designing products for recycling Another key challenge is that many products are not necessarily designed with recycling in mind.

Many of the chemical constituents used in a product as well as how different materials are structurally bonded together may pose a huge roadblock to recycling. Fortunately, digital technologies can be used to redesign products so as to make them more recycle-friendly. For example, cheminformatics can be used to design new chemistries, while materials informatics can be used to replace constituent chemicals in compounds and formulations, all with the goal of meeting requirements for easy recycling. Likewise, generative design can be used to redesign products so as to make it easy to separate multimaterial products without compromising the strength or performance of a product. 

6.Using emerging digital business models to enable recycling 

Cost has been and continues to be one of the biggest roadblocks to recycling. As a result, manufacturers are forced to charge customers a premium for recycled products, something that customers are not always willing to pay for. 

Now, low-cost digital technologies are allowing companies to build connected products and processes. Manufacturers are now able to collect, transmit, and analyze customer data rapidly and derive insights from them. This is allowing companies to react to customer needs in near real time, thereby allowing them to offer digitally enabled services instead of just products (see “Digital Transformation: 2019 Review and 2020 Predictions”). These X-as-a-service (XaaS) business models offer manufacturers the opportunity to bundle in the additional costs associated with recycling. For example, TerraCycle offers Loop, an online shopping platform with reusable packaging that several brands, such as UPS, Carrefour, and Tesco, are using. However, in addition to providing recyclable packaging, the company also plans to use the platform to gather data on consumer purchasing and consumption habits. Loop may also analyze consumer waste to determine consumer needs; for example, it could analyze the waste composition of used diapers and sell this information to formulation companies, which could then develop customized nutritional programs for those infants. Such business models allow for the cost of recycling packages and bottles to be bundled into the premium charged by the platform for the personalized services they offer. 

To summarize, digital technologies promise to help overcome many of the factors that are still holding back the circular economy. From logistics to design, there is an important role for digital technologies in facilitating the circular economy. Companies in the value chain would be wise to examine which of these approaches complement their strengths and enable future products, processes, and business models. 

For more information contact: www.luxreserachinc.com