Saturday 17 January 2015

Recycling used Hygienic Disposables

Marcello Somma, Sustainability Innovation Manager of Fater SpA (Italy) described the technical progress made on their 500kg/batch pilot plant developed to recycle diapers and other absorbent hygenic products (AHPs) .  He claimed it was achieving separation efficiencies of >95% without degrading the reclaimed materials which were produced sterile and at moisture contents below 20%.  Fater is a JV between Procter and Gamble and Angelini.


In Italy alone, 900,000 tonnes per year of used AHPs are landfilled or incinerated every year, and a system of segregation and collection of such waste already serves 7 million people.
The pilot plant looked like a very large drum washer/dryer which could discharge clean dry waste into a shredder/separator.  1 tonne of used diapers fed to the pilot plant contained about 50% body fluids and yielded 350kg of sterilised absorbent comprising fluff pulp and superabsorbent. 
 This recycled cellulose stream is being evaluated in pet-care absorbents, spill control products, compost, gas generation via digesters, paper mills, and even viscose production.  It also yields a recycled plastic stream comprising 150 kgs of white mixed PP/PE polymer chips which Fater claim can be fed to a wider range of processes than standard recycled plastic.


The process, when scaled up, will be good for citizens who will get a dedicated AHP collection service and cash savings (if the proposed pay-as-you-throw taxes are introduced).  Local councils will save money on landfill and increase their contribution to EU recycling and biodegradable waste targets.  Waste disposal companies will develop new business if they instal the Fater system and of course the environment will benefit from the negative C-footprint (-17kgs CO2/tonne) if Italy as a whole adopts the process.


The next step is to instal a larger continuous pilot plant with a capacity of 8000 tonnes/year in Veneto by the beginning of 2015.

Tuesday 6 January 2015

Sustainable Development

Uwe Bergmann, Director of Sustainability Management at Henkel (Germany) summarised the challenge of sustainable development as reducing our environmental footprint while improving the quality of life to allow 9 billion people to live well and within the limits of the planet by 2050.  Four major trends have to develop to make this possible:
  1. Growth must be decoupled from resource consumption.  For instance China hopes to reduce carbon emissions by 40% per RMB by 2020.
  2. Consumers must increasingly use social media to make their concerns known.  (1.13 million now follow Greenpeace on Twitter.)
  3. Regulations and de-facto standards must be tightened.  Walmart’s Sustainability Consortium has engaged 5000 suppliers has tackled 300 product categories to reduce their impacts.
  4. >50% of consumers are aware of the challenge but currently unwilling to change habits.

In 2013, the United Nations surveyed a 1000 CEO’s around the world and found that 32% believed the economy was on track to meet the demands of population growth.  33% felt that business as a whole was doing enough to address the challenge, but 83% feel that further progress will only come from more regulations.  They felt there would be a plateau beyond which a radical change in market structure driven by a common understanding of global priorities will be needed.  Innovation of new technologies, collaboration between industries and close cooperation with stakeholders will be needed to move above the plateau.  

In short, we have to achieve more with less.  By 2030 we need to triple the value we create from the current footprint of our operations, products and services.  This could be achieved by  combining long- and short-term targets where annual improvements of 5-6% would add up to achieving the long-term goals.

Henkel were targeting, over the next 5 years:
  • More value for customers: 10% more sales are needed from each production unit.
  • Safer workplaces: 20% reduction in accidents per million hours worked.
  • Reducing water usage by 15%.
  • Reducing waste by 15%.
  • Reducing energy consumption by 15%.

Examples of Henkel innovation included the development of  low-temperature hot-melt adhesive based on 50% renewable materials to reduce the energy required in diaper production.

Friday 2 January 2015

Spunmelt Nonwovens Life Cycle Analysis

Thomas Broch, Senior Scientist at Fibertex Personal Care (Denmark) described the use of cradle-gate Life Cycle Analysis to determine the impact of white spunmelt nonwovens production on global warming, non-renewable energy use, and multiple impacts such as human and environmental toxicity.

The starting assumptions with regard to the boundaries chosen, transport options, and the raw material data provided by different suppliers are key and can alter the results dramatically.  Improving the waste management in the production plant also had a profound effect, reducing the Fibertex emissions from 3348 to 2907 kg CO2 equivalent between 2000 and 2011, while reducing virgin PP resin use by almost 100,000 tonnes.  Using natural gas burners for heat generation further reduced C-footprint by more than halving the kg CO2 equivalent compared with electrical heating.

Converters varied in their demands for Environmental Product Declarations, but requests for raw data for calculations further down the supply chain were becoming less common and the focus on CO2 emissions as a key figure is increasing.