A new project aimed at encouraging businesses to save resources and adopt a more environmentally friendly business model was launched yesterday (20 August), in association with the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing.
The Circular Economy Toolkit runs workshops and provides materials free of charge to interested businesses, and suggests ways in which companies can save money and reduce their environmental impact whilst operating within a circular economy.
It is divided into seven main areas, each of which represents an opportunity for companies to ‘create more sustainable products and services’. These are:
- Design. Manufacture and Distribute
- Usage
- Maintain/Repair
- Reuse/Redistrbute
- Refurbish/Remanufacture
- Product Recycling; and
- Products as a service
Businesses are also encouraged to fill out an assessment form, which allows the project organisers to highlight potential areas of improvement and demonstrate how this could be achieved.
According to the project website, three companies have so far taken part. One business, an electrical equipment manufacturer, identified 26 opportunities to improve its operations, with one such opportunity potentially saving it up to £4 million.
Linear economy ‘unsustainable’
The creator of the project, Masters Student and Dissertation Researcher Jamie Evams says that the project is valuable as‘living on a finite planet’ means that a linear economy of production and disposal is ‘simply unsustainable and wastes huge sums of materials and resources’. He argues that instead, businesses should see waste as a potentially valuable resource and an opportunity to ‘improve their green potentials’.
The news follows the announcement in June by the Environmental Services Association that adopting a circular economy could generate up to 50,000 UK jobs and create £3 billion.
The first ten companies to participate in workshops and provide feedback by 6September will be given workshop start kits. The project runs until the end of August 2013.
Read more about the Circular Economy Toolkit.
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