A circular approach: recovering vital resources
by Ruth McNeil, Development Centre Team Leader, Scottish Water Horizons Ltd
With the increasing impact of climate change, many businesses are revolutionising the way they operate. From emissions reduction and waste recycling to more efficient energy usage, the environmental dial is thankfully beginning to shift.
But if we are to create a truly sustainable future, we need to do more and do it much more quickly. We can’t continue to source, manufacture, operate, and consume at current rates without depleting the earth of its finite resources.
So move over, ‘make-then-waste’, and step forward the circular economy. As someone who works in the low-carbon innovation industry, I believe a circular approach will provide a tremendous opportunity to retrieve valuable resources from waste materials and ultimately pave the way for a more sustainable and resilient future.
Here at Scottish Water, we are actively embracing this ethos. Currently, we are looking to recover resources from our waste water treatment processes by setting up ‘resource recovery factories’ on our assets. Water, energy, nutrients, heat, biofuel, and bioproducts are just some of the things that could be extracted and reused.
However, embracing a circular economy approach is not without its own challenges. Two of the most pressing ones that come to mind are the stringent regulatory requirements around waste and the need for a market willing to adopt and use products made from recovered resources.
For many industries, this means the development of a sustainable pipeline of recycled materials which can be used at various stages of the supply chain. Fundamental to this is the consistency and quality of these recovered products to build confidence in the supply chain.
Creating a sustainable market for these new products is not something that can be achieved by one company or even siloed industries for that matter. There needs to be a drive across all sectors and organisations as well as wider society to view waste as something of value that can be reused again.
Ideally, I would like to see a more collaborative approach where governments, regulators, biotech innovators work closely with companies such as Scottish Water to drive a circular economy, stop needless waste from going to landfill and build a resilient supply chain. A start has been made, but much more needs to be done to make this our sustainable reality.
From a Scottish Water perspective, I would be excited to hear ideas from the biotech community on how they could help water companies such as ours move the dial to support circular economy ambitions.