Adoption of waste economy in Pakistan to save money, environment

LAHORE: Pakistani entrepreneurs are gradually moving towards making the best use of consumed products, as the world has moved from reuse of wastes for environmental sustainability to consuming the waste to save money as well as this planet.

Preventing environmental pollution never appealed the businesses in Pakistan, and they continued to pollute water channels and air through their industrial processes.

They were not bothered about inefficient use of power and energy in their processes. However, this attitude is fast changing among the documented producers as the rates of power, energy and other inputs increased.

They are going for energy audits, since by making minor adjustments on their manufacturing floor they can save up to 15-25 percent in energy and power cost. They are going for recycling to reuse their raw materials and a few have gone to the extent of reusing components of the machines discarded by their end consumers.

Though the developed world has largely moved away from the linear business model of take, make and dispose; Pakistani entrepreneurs largely still adhere to this concept. We are at the primitive stage of the circular economy concept whereby we melt plastic products to remake similar or different plastic products.

We consider worn out machines a waste that could again be converted into another steel product after melting. This way we are using finished worn out products as raw material for our plastic and engineering industries.

In the past we used to dump these materials outside cities and created an environmental nightmare.

Now, even the shopping bags made from plastics are recycled. We have realised what developed world realized long time back that there is no waste in nature as the waste of one organism becomes the nutrient for another organism.

Circular economy is all about preserving value. The recycling as is being practiced currently does reduce waste by salvaging a part of the manufactured product. But during normal recycling one loses all the value, added by recovering the raw material only.

The energy, labour and assembly built during manufacturing is totally lost. For instance take the case of an iPhone that if refurbished retains 48 percent of its original value but if the gadget is recycled the retained value is only 0.24 percent. 

This stands true for most manufactured products. A photocopier for instance loses most of its value on recycling, but if some parts of the machine and the main frame is retained and only faulty parts are replaced it would work as efficiently as a new one, while saying a lot of the cost .

Globally, companies evaluate the residual value of a product when it becomes useless for the customer. They take these products back from the end user and restore them in good working condition and redeploy them in the market at a lower cost.

Some high cost medical equipment that is out of reach of smaller clinics becomes available for them at a much lower price. Since many parts are not replaced, it saves the cost of energy, material and labour required to produce and fix that part.

This process could go on for many cycles. Globally renowned companies like Caterpillar, Phillips and canon are actively reusing their machines, taking it back from the users at the end of their utility. Remanufacturing this way is not only good for the bottom line, but is substantially beneficial for the environment.

Remanufacturing is also part of a larger circular-economy concept. Successive use of materials, component parts and whole products from one use-cycle to another is known as cascading. In cascading, there is some loss of value at each stage, but the overall value extracted from the original product is very high.

The used garments are a part of cascading process, and once they are no more wearable, the fibre can be used in many other ways.

These include using as a fill-in in the sofa sets, and then again in stone wool insulation for construction.  Polyester is recycled from PET bottles and the fabric then weaved is used in making clothing for numerous fashion brands. The up-cycling of PET bottles to Polyester fibres has gained popularity even in Pakistan.