Circular Economy Principles and Practices in the Manufacturing Industry

01 Aug 2024

Articles

Circular Economy Principles and Practices in the Manufacturing Industry
By Reinaldo Ragil Rompas

Waste has turned into a severe issue which impacts not merely Indonesia, but the entire world. The growing creation of plastic garbage, electronic waste, and numerous other forms of waste demonstrates the importance of taking quick action to protect the natural environment and public health. A Circular Economy concept is an unique solution that has arisen to address the waste challenge. The Circular Economy describes an economic system or concept that seeks to accomplish economic growth while preserving the value of resources, materials, and goods in the economy for as lengthy as feasible. This tries to alleviate the environmental and social damage caused by a linear economic approach. Circular economy not only builds industrial models based on zero waste principles, but it also prioritizes social factors and the accessibility of renewable resources and energy. The technique of categorizing garbage as hazardous or non-hazardous may serve a key part in applying this economic idea.

Four principles of the circular economy can drive change in production by reducing waste. Those are reduce, refurbish/reuse, recycle, and recover. The first phase is to reduce material utilization, which involves lowering the number of raw materials by production unit. Morseletto (2019) claims that innovative design can improve efficiency in manufacturing as well as minimize material use. Reducing materials can reduce resource extraction and trash creation at the end of a product’s lifecycle. Morseletto believes that the world’s material footprint should be reduced by 80% by 2050.

The second step is reuse. Reuse is the subsequent use of a product or item that is in good shape and completely functional in order to create new products. The preceding product is still used for its original purpose and reusing it can help to extend its lifespan while limiting the development of new products. Morseletto defines refurbishing as the process of restoring a product or component in order to enhance or modernize it to attain its intended level of quality and performance.

Recycling is the process of transforming end-of-life items or parts into new substance. This minimizes waste, and secondary materials are either employed to create new original goods in a closed-loop procedure or utilized in other industries in an open-loop system. Recycling is a rapidly growing subject in the world. It may have a negative environmental impact because the procedure entails transportation and energy consumption. Recycling is simpler than reusing or refurbishing and it is quickly becoming a valuable means for achieving sustainability when utilized to finish the loop in the production of the same product.

After expending all other waste-reduction options, industries may recover energy through the manufacturing process by incineration of end-of-life products. The’recover’ idea for waste management is strategically extracting worth as well as resources from wasted resources that may not be immediately recyclable. This includes techniques like controlled incineration to recover energy, generating power or heat from organic waste, and converting non-recyclable polymers into energy sources. The recovery concept contributes to the development of a truly circular economy.

Circular economy strategies are everywhere around us. They can work in a variety of industries, from textiles to structures and construction, and at different stages of a product’s lifecycle, such as design, manufacture, distribution, and disposal. For example, in textiles and fashion industry, there are some programs that use regenerative agriculture to create pure cotton and other natural fibres, as well as natural colorings and dyes, resulting in higher quality and safer clothes for both consumer and environmental health. Clothing that is produced at a higher quality can endure longer, be repaired, thrifted, and recycled.

Circular solutions in the building and construction industry can involve minimizing the use of virgin resources, reusing current materials in circulation, or replacing carbon-intensive materials with regenerative alternatives like lumber. In a system of circular economy, electronic items are reconditioned, water-soluble, recyclable, and genuinely biodegradable packaging is standard, and waste from animals is used as natural fertilizer and converted into biogas for heating, cooking, and lighting.

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