The Institute for Sustainability (IfS) is to build the ‘first cross-business cradle-to-cradle (C2C) demonstrator on an industrial park in the UK’, having recently gained planning permission.
The demonstrator will be run by IfS, the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the University of East London (UEL), and process by-products from nearby industrial businesses ‘previously treated as waste’ into new products and resources. It will be run on the London Sustainable Industries Park (SIP) in Dagenham, East London.
IfS states that the companies that will take part include a food grade plastic recycling business, a gasification plant and an anaerobic digestion plant. It hopes that the demonstrator will ‘help businesses on the London SIP work together to understand how synergies between their production processes can result in creating additional value from their waste or by-products that would otherwise be down cycled, sent to landfill or discharged back into the environment’.
In an example of how waste products could be used, IfS states that the demonstrator’s output material, a form of aggregate, could be used to ‘help drainage on green roofs or on pathways in place of gravel’.
Removing waste streams
Darryl Newport, Director of the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of East London, said: “Using our research expertise, coupled with our innovative demonstrator technology, we will look to remove waste streams and develop new products. This will provide not only environmental but also economic benefits to our industrial partners at the London SIP and surrounding area.”
IfS Programme Director Stella Okeahialam addied: “In the UK alone, more than 434 million tonnes of waste are produced every year, driving a waste management industry worth more than £4.8 billion. As global demand for resources and the cost of transporting and disposing of unwanted materials increases, a number of approaches such as C2C and circular economy encourage a transformation in the way waste is considered and managed.
“The demonstrator provides a unique opportunity to show in practice how these approaches applied to industrial resources could not only reduce waste and help preserve finite resources, but can be commercially viable in the long term.”
The demonstrator comes as part of the C2C BIZZ project, which seeks to encourage cradle-to-cradle, rather than cradle-to-grave approached principles in companies across the UK and North West Europe. One of the three principles – ‘Everything is a resource for something else’ – urges businesses to consider all industrial and commercial waste materials to be nutrients that can be reused or consumed to produce other products.
The project will also involve the development of a toolkit for creating C2C business and innovation sites, as well as guidance on finance models, operational best practice and technical advice for industry use.
Read more about C2C BIZZ.
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