Sustainable manufacturing,life cycle thinking and the circular economy

Achieving sustainable patterns of consumption and production is perhaps the biggest challenge facing our society today. The de-mand for more safe environmentally benign products is rising and many companies are looking for new ways to progressively improve the sus-tainability of their products. Moreover, there are numerous opportunities and countless innovations, technological as well as non-technologi-cal,that need to be exploited to improve the sustainability of products. Manufacturing industry is an important sector of any economy and hasthe potential to become a driving force for enabling sustainable patterns of production and consumption through introducing efficient productionpractices and developing products and services that help reduce environmental impacts. The benefits of adopting an integrated policy towardsproduct development based on life cycle thinking and eco-design to stimulate improvement of the environmental performance of each part ofproduct life cycle phases and achieve sustainable patterns of production and consumption are emphasized. The challenges in implementingsustainable manufacturing and the circular economy approaches are listed. A number of solutions are suggested to face up these challenges,for instance, increased awareness of enterprises particularly SME's of product life cycle issues and the opportunities that are available for costsavings and profit making from eco-innovation in product development for both the domestic and export markets and providing practical helpand advice directly to enterprises on integrated product development to promote enterprise led Eco-innovation. Aiming at contributing to sus-tainable manufacturing in China, Sino-UK Low Carbon Manufacturing Consortium, a multi-disciplinary research and educational partnershipbetween academia, industry and government agencies in the UK and China with interest in sustainable manufacturing issues, has been formedrecently.The vision, aims and benefits of membership of the consortium are also discussed.

Life cycle assessment and leather production

Leather industry is facing new trends on production and consumption patterns due to society concerns.Circular economy is proposing a transition from the current economic model to a more sustainable one,in which waste is designed out and resources will be reused and recycled as long as possible.In this transition,Life Cycle Assessment(LCA)is an important tool to help decision-making.In the present review,39 English-written peer-reviewed papers related to LCA and leather have been found,30 of which were published in the last 6 years,meaning LCA is nowadays an important subject.Papers are presented within 4 types,focused on:1)the whole leather production process,2)a single step in the production process(e.g,new technologies for unhairing),3)waste treatment and recycling,and 4)life cycle thinking with ideas on long-term strategies for leather industries.As discussed in the literature review,leather industry has important challenges to address:increasing sustainability and transparency on the supply chain,and strengthening the beauty of leather.Taking up these challenges from a life cycle perspective will help leather industry flourish in the coming future.

Certification Criteria in Type I Ecolabelling Related to Metals for Sustainable Materials Management

A sustainable materials management for metals should be achieved to conserve resources of metal minerals.For the sustainable materials management,material flows through the whole life cycle of materials have been recognized by material flow analysis(MFA) studies.Former MFA studies pointed out that cyclic use of metals could be enhanced not only by increasing quantity of recovered scrap but also by upgrading quality of the scrap.In general,the quality is degraded by contaminants which commingle at disassembling processes.The mixture of contaminants depends on usage of materials in products.Here,Type I ecolabelling has a potential to convey messages for avoiding mixture of contaminants to the producers of finished products.In this study,on the basis of a survey on existing certification criteria related to metals in the world,a general concept of certification criteria on sustainable materials management for metals in Type I ecolabelling system is proposed.Finally,we propose six criteria in the form of certification criteria in Type I ecolabelling system.