The global waste value chain is a bit of a mess, comprising a huge mash-up of different companies and materials, each requiring different methods of recovery and recycling. Thankfully, data analytics providers like Topolytics are using cutting edge tech like machine learning to follow trash as it travels through the system, exposing exactly what happens to a company’s waste. This visibility provides manufacturers and retailers with deep insight into the fate of their waste once it leaves their orbit and helps spur investments in innovation and new infrastructure for reusing it, according to Michael Groves, CEO of Topolytics. “We have to treat waste as a raw material that’s being brought back into the cycle, something that can be purchased by a company,” Groves said on a recent SAP Insights Podcast.
Single-use plastic is a good example. Approximately 14 million metric tons of plastic waste enter the oceans annually – clearly the wrong place for things made of non-biodegradable, non-renewable materials that cost a lot of money to produce and are harming the ecosystem of the place they’ve been dumped. Thanks to new plastic taxes and tighter waste regulations, however, recycled plastics are gaining in value.
Groves believes COP26, the 26th Conference of the Parties, meaning the 197 nations that originally agreed to a pact on Climate Change back in 1992, is a historic moment. He’s pleased with commitments regarding forests and land use, as well as the pledges to cut emissions of methane, the ultra-potent greenhouse gas with a global warming potential 84 times greater than CO2, by 30 percent.
Equally important is the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) which brings together the financial sector to accelerate the transition to a net-zero economy. Limiting the rise of global temperature requires a whole new way of doing business. Moving from a take-make-waste economy to a circular one requires a new mindset, a new way of designing to eliminate waste, and of course, hefty investments.