In the realm of corporate sustainability, the focus often hones in on carbon emissions, energy consumption, and the path to NetZero achievements.
Yet, a significant aspect remains in the shadows: materials usage and waste management, an essential yet often overlooked factor in our pursuit of sustainability.
While carbon emissions and energy conservation rightfully command attention, the interplay of material use and waste generation also carries substantial carbon implications. This dynamic not only affects our carbon footprint but also resonates financially due to raw material costs and stringent waste regulations. In the journey towards a more cohesive approach to waste material management, we need an effective and cohesive data-driven approach.
In this guest blog, we revisit highlights and key takeaways from our event, “The Where of Waste: Understanding Waste Data for Sustainability,” hosted by Michael Groves, Topolytics‘ Co-founder & CEO. Michael is a Geographer with a PhD in satellite earth observation. He has over 20 years’ experience in environmental management and sustainability reporting. Topolytics is a data analytics business that is making the world’s waste visible, verifiable and valuable.
For those who coulnd’t attend in person, the event was also virtually streamed by our partners at Product Forge.
Michael Groves: Considering waste management for NetZero
Last month I was honoured to be asked to deliver a talk at The Data Lab Community Meetup held at The Bayes Centre, in Edinburgh. The community theme in July was Net Zero, so I wanted to describe how waste is a material issue when we talk about carbon emissions. I discussed how knowing more about what happens to this material is crucial to reducing its impact. Hence the title of the talk ‘The Where of Waste’.
If you didn’t catch the event live, you can catch up on the recording below:
Why the where?
The “where” is crucially important if we want to make meaningful changes to our relationship with materials and waste. This includes understanding:
- Where is waste generated?
- Where is it transported to?
- What distance does the waste travel?
Such insights can help to make the waste system more efficient and effective at reducing, moving and recovering materials for processing or re-use.
What’s being done to support waste management?
The waste sector is no different to other industries as it experiences a wave of digitisation and ‘Industry 4.0’ innovations. The traditional model of collecting and sorting waste is being changed with new machine vision and robotic systems that are making the recycling system work more efficiently.
At the same time, city authorities are deploying sensors across on-street bins (the internet of bins) that assist them to improve collection schedules. In parallel, new smart labelling systems such as those developed by a British company PragmatIC, linked to ‘smart bins’ are enabling re-usable packaging systems and deposit return schemes.
New business models are also being applied to products to drive a ‘circular economy’ – these include modular construction or leasing, which keep the products in use for longer.
Recycling technologies are also developing, for example, chemical and mechanical processes for processing plastics. At the same time, the processes and technologies required to ‘re-manufacture’ products and components are also developing rapidly. These new technologies will be required to deal with new ‘waste’ streams, for example the growing volumes of batteries from electric vehicles.
What happens in the waste system?
All of these technologies, whether commercial or experimental, are making a difference, but there remains a fundamental global challenge to reduce, then effectively deal with, the growing volumes of waste being generated across all urban areas and industrial processes.
Waste is an ever-moving global system of multiple materials, produced and used in multiple locations. It is then collected and moved through a series of sites, processes and transformations before it is recycled, incinerated, landfilled, processed, re-used or leaks into the environment.
Waste management is a complex industry with multiple stakeholders and many different materials, meaning it is difficult to build an accurate picture of what is happening. The data collected by these stakeholders varies significantly, depending on regulations, geography, technological sophistication or business models.
Waste management and data challenges
There is no single, perfect digital model of the waste system, because of this variation in data, systems and organisations. This is the challenge that Topolytics has set out to address. Building a live, data driven version of waste systems for large organisations that produce waste and are asking the question ‘what is happening to this material and what are we paying for?’
By processing and standardising an organisation’s waste data from many sources, we can provide the answers and help our customers to generate higher quality ESG reports, validate compliance, identify cost and resource efficiencies and measure carbon impact.
Don’t miss out on future events like this! Join The Data Lab Community and browse our full events list. Our in-person get-togethers provide refreshments and time to network with fellow attendees.
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