Menjadikan Sampah sebagai Suatu Circular Economy

Aprilya Lestari: Menjemput Sampah Agar tak Jadi Dosa Jariyah

Dengan menjadikan sampah sebagai suatu circular economy, Indonesia bisa memperbaiki penanganan sampahnya.

Pada usianya yang masih muda, Aprilya Lestari (26 tahun) memiliki kepedulian akan lingkungan sekitar. Tanpa takut merasa kotor, dia memilih bergelut untuk mengelola sampah lewat sebuah aplikasi berbasis lingkungan bernama IGoGreen.

Bersama dua sahabatnya, April-begitu dia akrab disapa-mendirikan aplikasi tersebut sejak September 2018.

IGoGreen mampu menggaet 25 bank sampah di wilayah Palembang, Sumatra Selatan, untuk kemudian dikumpulkan agar dapat dike lola oleh pihak-pihak tertentu.

Bagi orang yang belum paham pasti sulit membayangkan bagaimana bisa sampah ini bisa menghasilkan nilai ekonomi? Maka, kita mau meng arahkan masyarakat pada circular economydari sampah, kata April saat dihubungi Republika, Rabu (17/6).

Pemikiran April memang jauh ke depan bagi orang-orang seusianya. Hal itu terbukti dari kisah bagaimana dia akhirnya mulai tergerak un tuk menciptakan aplikasi berbasis lingkungan itu atas dasar panggilan jiwa. Indonesia didapuk dunia sebagai negara dengan penyumbang sampah terbesar kedua di dunia ke laut setelah Cina. Berdasarkan data Kementerian Lingkungan Hidup dan Kehutanan (KLHK), total sampah di Indonesia mencapai 68 juta ton pada 2019. Sementara, untuk sampah plastik mencapai 9,52 juta ton atau sekitar 14 persen dari total sampah yang ada.

Dengan fakta tersebut, April mengaku geram. Meski demikian, dia tidak berhenti pada ke marahan. Dia pun berpikir keras untuk tidak membiarkan sampah-sampah tersebut berakhir di lautan. Menurut dia, semua elemen masyarakat di Indonesia harus saling bahu-membahu untuk memperbaiki keadaan. Jangan sampai, sam pah-sampah itu menjadi dosa jariyah kita,kata April.

Dia menjelaskan, masing-masing individu dan sektor usaha memiliki peran sentral dalam upaya penanggulangan sampah di Indonesia.Mulai masyarakat, pemerintah, hingga generasi-generasi muda yang berjiwa kreatif dan inovatif.

Menurut dia, dengan menjadikan sampah sebagai suatu circular economy, Indonesia bisa memperbaiki penanganan sampahnya. Namun demikian, pengelolaan sampah yang baik pun harus dibudayakan dari level rumah tangga, lingkungan sekitar, hingga instansi, dan sampai pada tahap nasional--negara.

Jika pengelolaan sampah ini sudah berjalan dengan baik dan benar di seluruh elemen tadi maka dengan sendirinya circular economyitu bisa berjalan dengan maksimal, ungkap dia.

Sebagaimana diketahui, IGoGreen merupakan aplikasi yang berbasis lingkungan. Masyarakat diajak untuk memperhatikan sampah dan meng klasifikasikannya, khususnya sampah- sam pah anorganik agar memiliki nilai ekonomis. Sampah dijemput oleh mitra-mitra IGoGreen oleh masyarakat dapat ditukarkan menjadi uang dengan harapan dapat mengurangi polusi sampah rumah tangga.

photoAprilya Lestari, Menjemput Sampah Agar tak Jadi Dosa Jariyah - (Republika)
Adapun sistem kerjanya, yakni penghasil sampah bisa mengorder sampah melalui aplikasi IGoGreen. Nantinya, sampah tersebut akan dijemput ke lokasi. Petugas penjemput akan lang sung menimbang dan melakukan pembayaran terhadap jumlah sampah yang dikumpulkan untuk dijual tersebut.

Dalam aplikasi itu, para pengguna disajikan pilihan harga dan jenis sampah. Sedikitnya, terdapat 14 jenis sampah yang telah diberikan label harga dan klasifikasinya mulai dari botol plastik, kardus, hingga kaleng. Atas aksinya tersebut, April menjadi salah satu anak bangsa yang mewakili Indonesia dalam ajang Indonesia Delegation of the Global Enggagement Summit 2019 di Amerika Serikat. Aplikasi yang diciptakannya mendapat sambutan dan apresiasi yang hangat dari lingkup global.

Permasalahan dan pengelolaan sampah antara Indonesia dengan negara-negara maju pun sangat berbeda. April menjelaskan bagaima na budaya mengelola sampah serta perlakuan masyarakat akan sampah di dua kultur negara-negara yang berkembang dengan negara maju berbeda. Kalau di Eropa kanmalah, orang yang minta sampahnya dijemput kan malah mereka yang bayar. Kalau sampah mereka ketika dijemput itu nggakterpilah maka besok-besok sampah mereka nggakakan dijemput lagi, kata dia.

Dia berharap, pengelolaan sampah di Indonesia dapat menemukan titik terang mengingat anggaran yang dikucurkan pemerintah tidaklah sedikit. Di sisi lain, dengan hadirnya IGoGreen di tengah-tengah masyarakat dia pun berupaya menjadikan derajat pekerjaan pemulung menjadi lebih naik kelas. Kami ingin para pemulung yang mengumpulkan sampah ini derajatnya naik. Pekerjaan yang dianggap informal ini kami upayakan untuk bisa naik kelas menjadi profesi yang bernilai dan menghasilkan bagi pemulungnya, jelas dia.

Sumber :

https://www.republika.id/posts/7719/aprilya-lestari-menjemput-sampah-agar-tak-jadi-dosa-jariyah

What's Gone Wrong With Plastic Recycling

Of all the plastic ever produced—more than 10 billion tons of it—less than 10 percent has been recycled

By Kevin Loria
April 30, 2020
   
Illustration of the recycling symbol with plastic bottles replacing the traditional arrows
In the U.S., about 76 percent of plastic garbage goes into landfills, where it eventually breaks down into microplastics that contaminate the environment and potentially release problematic chemicals. An estimated 16 percent more is burned at very high temperatures, which produces greenhouse gases both during the incineration process and when those fossil fuels are used. An additional 1 percent of that total ends up littering our oceans, where sea life feeds and chokes on it, it breaks down into microplastics that end up in seafood, and it spreads even to the depths of the ocean floor.

Why isn’t more plastic recycled? Most plastic is less recyclable than people think. The very idea that recycling makes plastic use acceptable comes from plastics manufacturers, says Judith Enck, a former regional administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, now a visiting professor at Bennington College in Vermont and president of Beyond Plastics, a nonprofit focused on ending plastics pollution.

“The reason the public thinks recycling is the answer is that the plastic industry has spent 30 years on multimillion-dollar campaigns saying that,” she says. “That was absolutely the wrong message. The message should have been: Don’t use so much plastic.”

Most products are composed of mixtures of different plastics and chemicals, which can make recycling impossible. What’s more, these products are often covered with food waste that can further complicate the process. Even the two recycling codes considered most recyclable, 1 and 2, are “downcycled” most of the time, which means they’re turned into lower-quality products that will end up in a landfill because those materials can’t be recycled again. Big brands often use cheaper new plastic instead of recycled plastic.

Today, the percentage of what’s recycled is going down. Much of what’s collected now is unlikely to be recycled because in 2018, China, where most of the world’s plastic was sent to be recycled, stopped accepting it from other countries.

A Finger in the Dam
There are more programs aimed at reducing the avalanche. On March 1, New York state enacted a ban on many of the single-use plastic bags in grocery stores and shops—an effort to cut back on the estimated 23 billion plastic bags New Yorkers use yearly, after bans in seven other states and a number of cities.

Yet while efforts like these are laudable, they aren’t enough to overtake the reality that companies keep pumping out more and more plastic. Global plastic production is expected to almost quadruple by 2050, according to a 2016 report from the World Economic Forum (PDF). And because plastic is made from fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas, the report calculated that by 2050, 20 percent of oil production would be for making plastic.

Plastic Profits
Much of the current plastic boom is the result of a technology known as ethane cracking, which uses a byproduct of fracking to create the sorts of plastics used in packaging, often single-use plastic packaging, according to Enck. A new ethane cracking plant being built by petrochemical company Shell is expected to produce 1.6 million tons of polyethylene plastic each year.

Plastic production is a way for petrochemical companies to continue to profit even as countries turn from fossil fuels to renewable energy. And it comes at a high price: By 2030, plastic-linked emissions are expected to equal nearly 300 coal power plants. And the resulting products will continue to pollute waterways and hurt wildlife—while the human health risk from microplastics remains unknown. A 2016 United Nations report showed that more than 800 marine and coastal species are affected by marine debris, including plastic.

Many companies that sell the most plastic—Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo—have signed on to a nonprofit partnership between international organizations and corporations called the New Plastics Economy, whose stated goals include eliminating unnecessary plastics; ensuring that all plastic packaging is reused, recycled, or composted; and making sure that plastic packaging is free of hazardous chemicals. (Many health experts, though, are unsure that we can create plastic packaging without hazardous chemicals.) But gas and oil companies, which make most of the plastic, have not signed on to the New Plastics Economy’s goals. Gas and oil industry representatives still say that their products are safe and that recycling will improve.

“Plastics play an essential role in safety, in sanitary food packaging that reduces food waste, and food waste is a huge issue,” says Keith Christman, managing director of plastics markets at the American Chemistry Council, an industry group representing plastics manufacturers. “Work needs to be done to dramatically increase plastics recycling, particularly packaging. Our goal is to recycle and recover all plastic packaging by 2040. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to get there.”

Yet according to Enck and other experts, recycling doesn’t work if you keep making more plastic the whole time—you need to make less of it in the first place. “We can’t recycle our way out of the problem,” says Enck, who says consumers can pressure companies to move away from plastics, especially single-use plastics, altogether. “The only solution is reducing the generation and use of plastic.”


Sumber :
https://www.consumerreports.org/recycling/whats-gone-wrong-with-plastic-recycling/

Green Supply Chain Management – GSCM

By Sumit Wadhawan
August 21, 2020

As the year 2020, started we knew nothing or expected anything like what we have seen in the past several decades. COVID 19, which has created a huge storm in the everyone’s life and in every sphere of business, where people lost their lives, medical facilities were and are still being tested ( while I write this ) financial markets, consumerism & mental health are all being put under severe pressure by internal & external acts.

Isn’t it time for the organizations to have to realize that to most effectively manage the environmental burdens caused by industry and commerce, they need to look beyond just their most immediate operations and processes. Organizations need to consider their supply chain both upstream and downstream.


What are the external forces evolving for a greener environment?

Commerce and industry have gone through substantial changes over the past few decades. In the hearts of these evolutionary and revolutionary changes are political, social, technological, market, and economic forces that have caused organizations to seriously consider their impact on the natural environment.

Several forces have culminated in a much larger audience and stronger interest in greening and, broadly, sustainability.

If I need to rank the drivers then, here is the below –
1.     Science on environmental damages caused by industry has improved. In this situation, ignoring factual findings and consensus within science is hard to ignore. Climate change science, pesticides and endocrine disruptors, ozone-depleting gases, and a number of other environmental problems can be traced to practices, processes, and products from the industry.

2.     Communication is far swift & widespread than ever before. Companies can communicate with their shareholders, employees, and competitors. Consumers and communities and other stakeholders who are influenced by industrial and corporate activities can get their information faster. The advent of the Internet and minute-to-minute news and reporting have all contributed to this pervasive and incessant communication. Sharing this information has become easier than ever. Organizations seeking to limit their image and reputation risks pay close attention to this ubiquitous communication related to environmental concerns.

3.     Change which is a constant has become faster. New technologies and cultural changes have always occurred. But now, concerns that were once viewed, from an environmental perspective, as due to occur decades from now are starting to appear.

Record volatility in weather conditions, warming at historically increased and higher than ever levels, and the melting of the polar cap are all concerns that were expected to occur in the long-term future.

Industrially, globalization has become very common in commerce and industry; thus changes in one area can easily permeate the world. This includes environmental regulatory practices.

4.     Costs are higher and the impact is greater than in times past. As world population and affluence increase, further, development means the additional anthropocentric value is at stake. Environmentally related crises and catastrophes can mean a heightened impact due to the greater number of people affected and the greater developed property values lost.

The sea- coast regions of the world have the most valuable properties. These regions are very susceptible to weather changes, sea-level change, and contamination due to vulnerable watersheds. If environmental damage is caused by an industrial environmental accident, the integrated and concentrated populations of a region can be greatly affected. Sources of livelihood could be disrupted.

In developing countries, where the growth has been at historic levels—never before has this type of economic growth occurred globally— and where regulations and industrial hygienic and environmental practices have been lax, polluted lands and rivers can cause large parts of cities to shut down.

Finally, stakeholders have a louder voice. Communities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other non-fiduciary stakeholders can instantaneously broadcast their messages to the world. Given that communication and knowledge transfer has become easier and more accessible than ever before in the history of man, the same systems can prove valuable for those previously with limited voice. The major conduit of this information and messaging consists of various social media outlets. In many places in the world, news of corporate and supply chain environmental issues, accidents, disasters, and various incidents can be broadcast broadly through YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and even LinkedIn. Blogs have also become part of the social media landscape where various stories can be written and delivered by individuals. Stakeholder websites have also become avenues for sharing reports and stories broadly.

These and a number of other forces are causing organizations to pay greater attention to greening and environmental issues, more so now than in the past when regulatory issues were the major drivers.


Environmental Concerns

The major reason for the greening of corporate supply chains is to address environmental burdens caused by industry and its operations. The environmental burdens can occur in different media such as air, water, or land and at various levels, such as global, regional, and local levels.

Global issues affect regions throughout the world. The most pervasive environmental concern centers around global warming and climate change. Increasing global temperatures have been tied to anthropogenic activities. Likewise, species decimation is considered a global problem since various species can affect local or global ecosystems. Also, the global impact on plant biodiversity can also affect the potential to find medicines and cures.

Regional problems impact regional areas. For example, acid rain is a major issue in many developing countries due to increased manufacturing. Regional issues relate to the acidification of lakes and waterways, which may impact many water species and communities that depend on those water supplies.

Local problems are those that may impact municipal areas instead of whole regions. For example, pesticides and herbicides may affect local waterways and agricultural regions. Herbicides may cause less diversity and more sensitivity among the plants in a region due to a decrease in biodiversity. Pesticides with endocrine disruptors can impact human health and fertility in local areas.

Industry and its supply chains have been major contributors to these sources of anthropogenic environmental burdens. But industry and supply chains are needed to supply the demands of our increasing populations. The balance of economics with the environmental and social influences of organizations and their supply chains is a challenge for both organizations and governments.


Green Supply Chain Management from linear Supply Chains to Closing the Loop via Circular Economies.

The traditional supply chain management description by several academics and professors implies a linear relationship with flows up and down the supply chain.

As environmental issues and sustainability become more integrated, the supply chain will need to become more circular and nonlinear, where loops may not necessarily return to the beginning of a supply chain but can occur anywhere within the supply chain.

The return aspect has been recognized as an important dimension within the SCOR model, although extending the life of the product and greening aspects were not the major goals in the introduction of the return activities. These major activities were initially concerned with warranty and service returns.

To “close the loop” of the supply chain, major elements of reverse supply chains and reverse logistics need to be integrated into the standard linear definition of the supply chain. The activities may also relate to various greening concepts, such as recycling, remanufacturing, reclamation, reuse, and reduction, which are listed in the figure in the order of least to greatest environmental burden.

The forward supply chain begins with product and process design. Procurement focuses on the upstream supply chain.

Both raw material (non-recycled material) and virgin material (material that appears in its most fundamental form) are acquired for production purposes.

Production may contain fabrication and/or assembly operations and activities. Finally, come distribution activities to the customers for consumption. These are the traditional linear activities of the supply chain.

The return activities, managed by reverse logistics functions, then flow back into various stages of the forward supply chain. Reuse, remanufacture, and recycle activities may occur at different stages.

Typically, the later the stage at which the flow of returned products and materials occurs back to the forward supply chain, the less energy that is expended, the fewer operations that occur, and the less environmental burden that results.

Other elements of this model include energy usage, waste generation, and reduction of materials and waste throughout the supply chain activities. This flow may be for one or multiple organizations.


Corporate Environmental Management

Understanding some of the major greening activities of green supply chains requires understanding some of the major internal corporate environmental practices that have evolved over the past couple of decades.

Traditional corporate environmental management activities would include filing environmental reports, acquiring environmental information that is required by law, and complying with environmental regulations. These activities are typically reactive activities inasmuch as they are required by law.

But, in order to not only meet regulatory policy but possibly to gain competitive advantage, a number of practices, tools, and technologies have been utilized by organizations. Four major corporate environmental elements include environmental management systems (such as ISO 14000 systems), life cycle analysis (LCA), and eco-design (also known as design for the environment).

1.   Environmental Management Systems (ISO 14001)
Environmental management systems (EMS) can be defined in many ways. EMSs can range from relatively informal systems managed operationally by a standalone single computer to more involved programs, such as the best known EMS standards, the ISO 14001 certified EMS. The ISO 14000 series of standards includes elements of organization evaluation and product/process evaluation. These standards include descriptions of EMS, environmental performance evaluation, and environmental auditing. Product and process standards help to define LCA, environmental labeling, and environmental factors in product standards. The only standard that may be registered or certified is the ISO 14001 (environmental management system) standard. The remaining elements are only guidelines available to organizations.

The substantive requirements of ISO 14001 document and include Environmental Policy, Planning, Implementation and Operation, Checking and Corrective Action, and Management Review. The ISO 14001 EMS requirements embody the PDCA (plan-do-check-act) cycle of continuous improvement. In the PDCA cycle, an organization plans a change aimed at improvement (plan), implements the change (do), evaluates the results (check), and finally institutionalizes the change (act). The comprehensiveness of these systems incorporates many traditional corporate environmental activities and more proactive, competitively

Oriented activities, including LCA and eco-design, which we briefly introduce.

2.   Life Cycle Analysis
Life cycle analysis (LCA) is a systemic process used to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with a product or process. It identifies energy and materials used and the wastes or emissions released to the environment LCA is also meant to evaluate and implement opportunities to effect environmental improvements. A life cycle of a product, service, or utility may include evaluation and analysis from the inception or the design of a product until its end-of-life disposal or disassembly and beyond, such as its reassembly. LCA involves calculating and analyzing the burdens associated with the production, use, and reuse of utilities, goods, and services over their life cycle. This includes processes such as cultivation, extraction, manufacture, delivery, use, recycling, and maintenance. The closed-loop nature of materials and products has made such an analysis more complex and may incorporate product stewardship activities.

An LCA could include three separate but interrelated components: an inventory analysis, and impact analysis, and improvement analysis. Life cycle inventory analysis quantifies energy and raw materials requirements, air emissions, waterborne effluents, solid waste, and other environmental releases incurred throughout the life cycle of a product, process, or activity. The goal is to examine all the inputs and outputs in a product’s life cycle, beginning with a product’s composition, where those materials came from, where they go, and the inputs and outputs related to those component materials during their lifetime. It is also necessary to include the inputs and outputs during the product’s use. In practice, much of LCA focuses on this level of analysis.

Life cycle impact assessment is an evaluative process of assessing the effects of the environmental findings identified in the inventory component for all inputs and outputs throughout the activities of an organization or supply chain. The impact assessment normally addresses ecological and human health impacts but has expanded to include social, cultural, and economic impacts. The impacts from a process from the production and use of a product in order to benchmark impacts from competing products or processes could be compared to help manufacturers or consumers choose among options.

Life cycle improvement analysis (LCIA) is a continuous improvement process. LCIA conducts an improvement analysis to determine how the product, service, or utility influences the environment. For example, the conservation of energy or water in the manufacturing process will reduce the environmental impacts of that process. Substituting a less hazardous chemical for a more toxic one would also reduce the impact. The change is then made in the inventory analysis to recalculate its total environmental impact.

3.   Design for the Environment and Eco-Design
The term ‘design for the environment (DFE)’ or ‘eco-design’ refers to the environmental design of a product and/or a process. It focuses on reducing (preventing) the environmental effects of a product before it is produced, distributed, and used. Eco-design examines the disassembly of products at the end of life and reveals the associated cost benefits and environmental impact of revision, reuse, and recycling. Eco-design and LCA typically go together with the required appropriate information and database systems. Along with the usual design factors, DFE recognizes that environmental impacts must be considered during the new product and process design and redesign. It is defined as the systemic consideration of design performance with respect to environmental, health, and other objectives over the full product life cycle. DFE is a design process in which a product’s environmentally preferable attributes—recyclability, disassembly,

Maintainability, refurbish ability, and reusability—are treated as design objectives rather than design constraints.

DFE is the ultimate pollution prevention tool. It is at the design phase of any product where a majority of the product’s characteristics are fixed, and 80 percent of the environmental impacts may be determined at this stage. The DFE process usually entails five major steps: assess environmental impacts; research the market; run an ideas workshop (brainstorm), or ideas generation; select design strategies; design the product. The tools for DFE are quite varied and range from simple scoring approaches to techniques that include detailed databases and a broader continuous evaluation of the product and process as data is generated and gathered.

Other corporate environmental management activities that may influence organizational and inter-organizational planning include product stewardship, ecological and carbon footprinting, eco-labels, total quality environmental management, lean principles, and the so-called RE’s—Recycling, Remanufacturing, Reuse, Reclamation & Reduction.


Sumber :
https://www.sourcingandsupplychain.com/green-supply-chain-management-gscm/

Sustainable Consumption and Production

Penerapan Konsep Circular Economy dalam Mencapai Sustainable Consumption and Production di Industri di Indonesia

Sabtu, 22 - Agustus - 2020


Indonesia merupakan negara yang memiliki beragam sektor industri yang memiliki tujuan keberlanjutan di masa mendatang sesuai dengan Sustainable Development Goals ke-12. Hal ini menyebabkan perlunya pembahasan yang lebih mendalam untuk mencapai tujuan tersebut.

Oleh karena itu, STKSR (International Seminar on Chemical Engineering Soehadi Reksowardojo) bersama Ikatan Alumni Teknik Kimia ITB, Himpunan Mahasiswa Teknik Kimia ITB dan Badan Kejuruan Persatuan Insinyur Indonesia kembali mengadakan acara tahunan berupa webinar dengan tema Circular Economy for A Better World.

Acara tahunan ini memiliki berbagai rangkaian acara, salah satunya webinar yang diselenggarakan pada Selasa 28 Juli 2020 lalu, dengan topik Penerapan Konsep “Circular Economy” dalam Mencapai “Sustainable Consumption and Production” di Industri Indonesia.

Kegiatan ini dibuka terlebih dahulu oleh Prof. Brian Yuliarto, Dekan Fakultas Teknologi Industri. “Meskipun kita sedang berada di dalam situasi pandemi, kita masih tetap bisa mengadakan acara tahunan ini. Dengan adanya pandemi ini, memaksa para pelaku industri memutar strateginya. Namun, ide-ide dari akademisi dan pelaku industri tetap bermanfaat bagi para mahasiswa dan kampus ITB,” ujarnya saat membuka sesi webinar.

Materi webinar dibagi menjadi tiga bagian, yaitu penjelasan mengenai hubungan antara SDG No.12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) dengan Circular Economy. Materi pertama ini disampaikan oleh Ir. Noer Adi Wardojo, M.Sc. Menurutnya, Circular Economy merupakan salah satu pendekatan yang digunakan dalam implementasi SDG No. 12.

Namun, konsep ini bila kita sadari tidak terlalu identik dengan tujuan dari SDG No. 12. Oleh karena itu, kita harus tetap mengenalkan pendekatan lainnya yang berbeda. Tetapi, satu hal yang penting bahwa apabila pelaksanaan Circular Economy ini berhasil, pencapaian SDG No. 12 akan jauh lebih mudah.

Materi kedua disampaikan oleh Ir. Achmad Gunawan, M.A.S. mengenai regulasi dan kebijakan yang mendasari pelaksanaan Circular Economy. Menurutnya, pelaksanaan Circular Economy ini harus diawali dengan pengelompokan dan pengolahan limbah industri, dari mulai yang tidak berbahaya sampai dengan yang berbahaya dan beracun. Dengan pengelompokan limbah, dapat menjadikan pengolahan limbah semakin mudah.

Sementara itu, materi terakhir mengenai pengaplikasian dan implementasi Circular Economy disampaikan oleh Dra. Liana Bratasida, M.Si. Menurutnya, konsep Circular Economy dapat dijadikan solusi dari tantangan yang dihadapi oleh SDG dengan mengatasi akar masalahnya. Dengan mengubah sistem yang berawal dari ekonomi linear menjadi ciruclar economy yang berfokus pada proses recycle limbah industri. “Seperti contoh, industri kertas akan mendaur ulang kertas-kertas bekas, hal ini dapat mengurangi penggunaan emisi dan energi. Namun dalam pengaplikasiannya diperlukan kerja sama dari semua stakeholder,” pungkasnya.


Sumber :
https://www.itb.ac.id/news/read/57577/home/penerapan-konsep-circular-economy-dalam-mencapai-sustainable-consumption-and-production-di-industri-di-indonesia

Inocycle Technology (INOV) Bangun Pabrik Daur Ulang Plastik,

Bangun pabrik daur ulang plastik, Inocycle Technology (INOV) anggarkan US$ 10 juta

PT Inocycle Technology Group Tbk (INOV) berencana untuk melakukan ekspansi di sejumlah wilayah. Emiten yang bergerak di bidang daur ulang sampah botol plastik ini akan menambah fasilitas pencucian botol (washing facility) dan pabrik pengolahan atau daur ulang plastik.

Direktur INOV Victor Choi mengungkapkan, agenda ekspansi terdekat dan sedang berjalan adalah pembangunan pabrik di Sumatra Utara, yakni di Medan dan Deli Serdang. Pabrik serat daur ulang atau Recycled Polyester Staple Fiber (Re-PSF) dan produk bukan tenun (non-woven) akan dioperasikan di Medan, sedangkan washing facility berlokasi di Deli Serdang.

Untuk membangun pabrik tersebut, INOV menganggarkan investasi sekitar US$ 10 juta. Kapasitas washing facility direncanakan mencapai 250 ton, sedangkan pabrik re-PSF dan non-woven mencapai 300 ton-500 ton. Pembangunan pabrik ini diharapkan bisa rampung pada akhir 2020, atau di tahun 2021.

"Setelah pencucian, bahan baku dibawa untuk menjadi produk Re-PSF atau non-woven. Investasi (untuk pembangunan pabrik) kira-kira US$ 10 juta," kata Victor dalam paparan publik virtual yang digelar Rabu (19/8).

Victor mengungkapkan, sumber pendanaan ekspansi pabrik INOV berasal dari dana hasil penawaran umum perdana saham (IPO) dan juga fasilitas perbankan.

Adapun, dari IPO pada 10 Juli 2019 lalu INOV mendapatkan dana sebesar Rp 152 miliar. Sebesar Rp 9,95 miliar digunakan untuk biaya-baya IPO sehingga dana bersih yang diterima INOV sebesar Rp 142 miliar.

Merujuk pada hasil Rapat Umum Pemegang Saham Tahunan (RUPST), INOV menggunakan dana IPO tersebut untuk modal kerja (30%), pembayaran utang (40%) dan sisa dana (30%) ditempatkan pada bank.

Lebih lanjut, Direktur INOV Suhendra Setiada mengungkapkan bahwa per 1 Juli 2020 pihaknya masih dalam tahap pengumpulan botol sebagai persiapan kegiatan washing facility di Deli Serdang. Suhendra menambahkan, rencana ekspansi INOV tak hanya di Sumatra Utara.

Kata dia, INOV juga bakal berekspansi di tiga lokasi lainnya. Yakni washing facility di Lampung dan Balikpapan, serta washing facility dan pabrik non-woven di Makassar. Fasilitas dan pabrik di Makassar rencananya akan mulai dibangun pada tahun 2021.

Asal tahu saja, proses kerja INOV dimulai dari pengumpulan botol plastik PET yang dibersihkan di washing facility. Selanjutnya akan diolah untuk menghasilkan sejumlah produk konsumen dengan pengolahan lebih lanjut.

Sebagai gambaran, produk Re-PSF biasa digunakan untuk sebagian isian jaket, boneka, sepatu dan berbagai produk lainnya. Jenis produk non-woven sebagai geotekstil untuk konstruksi, bantalan mobil dan keperluan lainnya. Sedangkan untuk homeware biasa digunakan sebagai produk tempat tidur, bantal, selimut, dan keperluan lainnya.

Saat ini, INOV memiliki lima pabrik dengan total kapasitas mencapai 37.600 ton. Suhendra menjelaskan, INOV memiliki tiga pabrik re-PSF yang berada di Tangerang (Banten) dan Karanganyar (Jawa Tengah) dengan kapasitas masing-masing 10.200 ton, serta di Mojokerto (Jawa Timur) berkapasitas 13.200 ton.

Selain itu, INOV juga memiliki pabrik non-woven dan homeware di Salatiga (Jawa Tengah) dan Palembang (Sumatera Selatan) dengan kapasitas masing-masing 2.000 ton.

Pada tahun 2019, INOV mendaur ulang lebih dari 38 juta kilogram botol plastik PET menjadi Re-PSF. Per 30 Juni 2020, 70% produksi Re-PSF dijual ke pihak ketiga dan 30% lainnya ke pihak terkait.


Sumber :
https://industri.kontan.co.id/news/bangun-pabrik-daur-ulang-plastik-inocycle-technology-inov-anggarkan-us-10-juta

Now is the Time to Transition to a Circular Economy

19 AUGUST 2020

In this article, TOMRA gives its views on how the current pandemic can support a green recovery, as well as a transition to a circular economy for plastics.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it a wave of consequences for areas such as health, the global economy, the environment, and supply chains. Alongside this, there has been a rise in the challenges around plastic and plastic waste, which for several years have been growing as a different kind of global crisis.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has seen an increased demand for single-use plastics - such as disposable face masks, gloves, packaging from a rise in online retail sales, and takeaway containers and utensils as restaurants switch from dine-in to take-away. This plastic is necessary for public health but is unsustainable for the environment.

The turbulence of the current global situation demonstrates why we should be future-proofing all kinds of supply chains, including packaging and plastics. As the recovery from the pandemic begins, we must support supply chains to become green and continue the transition to a circular economy. The global economy is starting to show signs of bouncing back; however, we must not get caught in the trap of falling into old habits around waste.

COVID-19 has started to cause delays or push-back on plans to transition for plastics to a circular economy, a system that keeps products, components, and materials at their highest value throughout their life cycles within a closed loop. Deposit return schemes (where consumers receive a refund when they return empty drink containers for recycling) have been postponed in Scotland and Western Australia, and the UK government has put plans to ban plastic stirrers, straws, and cotton buds on hold. In the US, there are campaigns attempting to overturn the current bans on plastic bags in retail.

But, if anything, now is the time for society to make the changes we have been talking about to save our planet, and there is no time for delays. We must use the pandemic as a chance to accelerate change. The current situation gives society, businesses, and governments an opportunity to reassess behaviour and reflect on what direction they should move in and continue in a way that is not damaging our environment. The need for action to support the green recovery has also been reiterated by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who stated that the pandemic offers a "real opportunity to do things right for the future."

Accelerating the transition to a circular economy for plastics

This pause in “normality” must be a signifier for change. Let’s use the time to transition to a circular economy and focus on the adjustments that society needs to make to enable this.

For plastic, the circular economy begins with the design of products and packaging and ensuring all plastics are made with a view to being reused or recycled in a continuous loop. Currently, only 2% of all plastic packaging remains in a closed recycling loop, so emphasis must be placed on the need for packaging manufacturers to design packaging for recycling so the material can be reused.

As well as changing packaging design, a mindset needs to be developed to further encourage and promote recycling. Plastic needs to be treated as a quality material that can be reused in the production of new plastic and not as waste. Although negative perceptions of plastic are rising, it is a very useful material; the problem is in the way the material is mishandled once used. We need to change consumer perceptions of plastic, promote understanding of recycling, and encourage recycling habits.


Driving change through planning and legislation

To make a significant impact, we need plans that are supported by legislation to encourage the transition to a circular economy. A leading charge is the EU’s new Circular Economy Action Plan – Europe’s new way toward a climate-neutral, competitive economy of empowered consumers.

The latest initiative from the EU focuses on the entire lifecycle of a product, looking at the initial design process, the sustainable consumption of products, and ensuring that resources within the EU economy are kept within the loop. The plan focuses on the sectors which use the most resources and where there is the potential to create circularity with their use and reuse.

Plastics and packaging are important areas where the EU is looking to create key value chains to support both a circular economy and the green recovery. The plan focuses on driving the transition through research, innovation, and digitalization to create a cleaner and more competitive Europe, which is key to supporting a green recovery.

A green recovery wouldn't just help the environment and get us on track to tackle climate change, it would also help economic recovery through the creation of jobs. A recent Greenpeace report highlights that, if properly funded, a green recovery could create around 1.8 million jobs in the UK, which is a huge opportunity given the current recession.


The economy leading the green recovery

During the pandemic, the global economy has been severely impacted due to lockdown restrictions forcing businesses to change how they operate. However, as the economy begins to recover, it brings the risk of falling back into old habits when it comes to handling waste.

These recent times have seen an increase in single-use plastics only due to necessity, but the pandemic presents the chance to trigger behavioral change around waste. It gives society, businesses, and governments a huge opportunity to reassess the design, consumption, and handling of waste products and packaging. This opportunity must be taken to create efficient systems that enable the circular economy for plastics.


Sumber :
https://packagingeurope.com/now-is-the-time-to-transition-to-a-circular-economy/

Fancy Paper from Elephant Poop

How Elephant Poop Becomes Fancy Paper in Sri Lanka

An elephant can defecate 16 times in one day—and its 200 pounds of dung can double as paper pulp.

NOVEMBER 8, 2019

 

 GROWN-UP ELEPHANTS CAN EAT MORE than 300 pounds of food—mostly grass, twigs, foliage, and tree bark—in a single day. In the same period, they may defecate 16 to 18 times, producing over 200 pounds of dung. In Randeniya, a small village in the lower wetlands of Sri Lanka, elephant poop is a renewable resource. The sun-dried, deep-brown dung piles up like haystacks in a painting by Claude Monet.

Visitors could be forgiven for thinking that the poop is useless. But at Eco Maximus, a manufacturer in Randeniya, it takes on a second life. More than 20 years ago, a man named Thusita Ranasinghe saw some dung and had an idea. “He thought he could make paper from it,” says the company’s brand designer, Susantha Karunarathne, with a smile. At his office inside the company factory, Karunarathne wears a green t-shirt which says #elephantdungpaper and shows off some of his recent journal designs.

On a table nearby, a several women carefully design covers for multi-sized notebooks. On another, the finished product is packed and ready to be shipped. Today, Maximus creates a range of stationery and souvenirs, which are sold in the local market and in 30 other countries around the globe.

Eco Maximus was an early producer of elephant dung paper, and the first in Sri Lanka, and refining the manufacturing process involved a lot of trial and error. Elephant dung is brought in by nearby rescue centers, Karunarathne says during a tour of the factory. Fresh elephant dung, semi-solid and green in color, smells. But after it dries under the hot tropical sun, the smell disappears. Collectors gather the deep-brown, fiber-rich piles in a piping-hot steam boiler. “We boil for one hour, to ensure that the dung is germ-free,” says Vibhatha Wijeratne, the factory manager, wearing a pair of yellow gloves as he shows me a pile of boiled dung.

Paper pulp mostly consists of two things: elephant dung and off-cut, which is an industry term for scraps cut from a larger piece of paper.

In one corner of the factory, bundles of paper with crumpled edges are stacked upon each other. There are different colors—earthy tones, blues, tropical greens, and deep reds. Thousands of years ago, much of the writing in Sri Lanka was inscribed on stones. Later, the islanders wrote on leaves, such as the fronds of the palmyrah palm, locally known as the tal. “Palmyrah leaves were boiled and sun-dried for writing, which was called pus kola (old leaves),” says bright-eyed Randika Jayasinghe, who teaches biosystems technology at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura.

Conventional papermaking began after Sri Lanka was colonized by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and then the British, who referred to the island as Ceylon. Most paper uses wood pulp as the main material, which is fibrous and rich in lignin and cellulose. “It is prepared by chemically and mechanically separating fibers from wood,” Jayasinghe says. “These chemicals are then released as wastewater.” The problem is that nearly 4 billion trees are cut down every year to manufacture paper. Some are farmed, but others are logged from managed and old-growth forests. “Since paper is biodegradable, we consider it to be eco-friendly compared to plastics,” Jayasinghe says. But it comes at a significant environmental cost.

After the British left Sri Lanka in 1948, the local government opened 12 factories in the 1960s to utilize waste straw from rice paddies for papermaking. But by 1993, only two of them remained. One of them was managed by Shirani Fairbanks. “I walked into the Export Development Board in Colombo, and by accident, I saw a sheet of paper made from banana fiber,” says curly-haired Fairbanks, collecting a bundle of vibrant wrapping paper from her office table. “It inspired me to start Trickledown.” Her company eventually moved beyond conventional papermaking, when they began using waste material—tea refuse, banana skins, pineapple fiber—to make paper. “There’s a huge demand for elephant dung paper products in the market,” Fairbanks tells me. They have a unique aesthetic appeal, which many young people love.” The company now sources paper from manufacturers around the country for their stationery, crafts and other products. One of them is Eco Maximus.

Back at the Eco Maximus factory, Wijeratne, the manager, shows off a 1000-liter cement tank known as the beater. A rubber hose pipes water into the tank from a nearby tap, and an employee uses his bare hands to toss in steam-boiled dung, which now resembles a yarn ball made out of earthy fibers. “This is the pulp we use for inner pages of notebooks,” Wijeratne says. “One-third of this pulp is elephant dung, while two-thirds of it is offcut.” Offcut is two things: leftover paper brought from warehouses in Colombo, and remains from Eco Maximus paper that has been leveled and cut into desired sizes. Finally, bucket of deep magenta liquid is added to the mixture. (Eco Maximus also makes paper from elephant dung alone, but its fibrous texture makes it unsuitable for writing or drawing.)

In one of the last steps of papermaking, a woman pours a jug of pulp onto a thin metal mesh. The mesh is dipped in water, and she uses her fingers to mix the pulp for a few seconds, leveling it on the mesh while the water trickles down. “This is for 150 GSM writing paper,” Wijeratne tells me, using the industry acronym for “grams per square meter.” (Printer paper is usually less than 100 GSM, while business cards can be as high as 400 GSM.) Two women hold the mesh up and press it onto a slightly larger cotton fabric, which is laid flat on a table by a third woman. She then folds the fabric edges in and seals it, which creates a fabric-pulp sheet. Smiling and chatting, they soon make a pile of sheets.

“We use this machine to compress the water out,” says Karunaratne, pointing to a large electric machine. A middle-aged man manually controls the machine, which squeezes a bundle of fabric-pulp sheets as water drips down. “Now you can remove the cotton fabric, and let it dry.” Karunarathne takes me to a large section of the factory where colorful papers are neatly racked. Drying takes place under the asbestos roof, as direct sunlight could bleach the blues, tropical greens, earthy tones, and deep reds.

Finally, two cheery ladies stand by a large aluminum sheet iron, which smooths out the creases and rough edges one sheet at a time. “Ironing is the final step of raw papermaking,” says Wijeratne. These paper sheets will be cut, leveled and turned into stationery.

The transformation of poop into paper is complete. Outside, in a neighbor’s garden outside the factory, it is about to start all over again. An elephant marches past, holding a clump of grass beneath his trunk. He leaves a pile of poop before he moves on. “It will be turned into paper tomorrow,” Karunarathne says, and laughs.

Sumber :

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/elephant-dung-specialty-paper-sri-lanka

Sumber video :

https://www.facebook.com/NasDailyBahasaIndonesia/videos/742764543183066/UzpfSTExNDI4MDY1MDM2MTQ5OToxNzU0ODY2MTQyNDA5MDI/

5 Ways the Print Industry can Apply Circular Economy Principles

Five ways the print industry can apply circular economy principles

By Louella Fernandes on January 15, 2020
Articles, Trends

Quocirca’s releases new Executive Briefing report Sustainability: How the print industry is applying circular economy principles

Sustainability is not a new initiative for the print industry. From concern about paper consumption, to reducing energy use and developing recycling programmes, the print sector has frequently embraced environmental issues. That said, sustainability considerations have never attained the profile and urgency that we see today. The transition from a more peripheral issue to a primary concern is clearly demonstrated in our Global Print 2025 Second Edition market insight study, where more than half of IT decision makers stated that reducing the environmental impact is the top challenge associated with the managing the print infrastructure.

Those IT decision makers expect that print manufacturers and suppliers will play a role in helping them gain environmental performance improvements – 57% believe that suppliers should be taking a leading position around sustainability by 2025. At the same time, pressure is being exerted from consumers and investors for print companies to earn their status as good corporate citizens, making a sustainable approach an important part of maintaining corporate reputations. Finally, the commercial benefits of pivoting business models towards a circular economy approach are becoming clear and compelling. Both HP and Xerox last year included in annual reports revenues they attribute directly to sustainability programmes.

This combination of factors is driving the industry towards embracing circular economy principles. It is widely recognised that natural resource scarcity and impacts during use mean the traditional “take, make, waste” production model is not sustainable and must be rejected in favour of a circular, regenerative approach that strives to maintain products at the highest value and utility for as long as possible. This axiom can be – and indeed in many cases is already being – applied by the print industry in several ways:


1. Incorporate reused materials and circularity potential at the design phase

The incorporation of non-virgin materials into new products is gathering pace. An example is HP’s Elite DragonFly notebook, which uses 50% post-consumer recycled plastic, including 5% made from ocean-bound plastic, and Xerox, whose products contain up to 5% post-consumer recycled plastic content.

Manufacturers are focusing on designing products on a modular basis, with fewer parts overall and consideration given to end-of-life disassembly and reuse. In this way the value of raw materials is retained post-consumption.


2. Design to minimise energy use, emissions, consumables and product failure

Designing products that last longer and fail less often is another essential part of the rejection of “throwaway” philosophy. This ranges from improving durability in existing products to a complete rethink of technology approaches that employ long-life materials, such as Kyocera’s 1992 introduction of ceramic print drums designed to last the lifetime of the product.

Continuously improving energy efficiency and reducing emissions is another way to minimise the impact of products in use. The almost ubiquitous Energy Star and Blue Angel ratings act as a baseline on which manufacturers should strive to improve, while the provision of “eco” modes allows consumers to reduce resource consumption still further during the use phase.


3. Use big data to develop service innovations

A key opportunity for driving circular advantage is applying intelligence to the wealth of data generated by smart connected devices, in this case MFPs. IoT sensors can deliver up to the minute reporting on the status of assets, and enable real-time optimisation. Notably, such data can deliver new insights into key performance indicators (KPIs), by-products and wastage. This can help suppliers to develop support and maintenance programmes that minimise unnecessary interventions and ensure that products last longer and are functioning at their most efficient.

IoT devices can also integrate into platforms such as smart buildings, delivering and receiving data that contributes to the more sustainable operation of the entire environment.


4. Further enhance subscription-based services and help clients embrace cloud print management

The shift from the purchase to the subscription model is already advanced in the print sector. However, our recent MPS survey found that many businesses are still failing to achieve the desired efficiencies in cost, performance and sustainability. By improving fleet management, monitoring and maintenance, suppliers can increase customer satisfaction and help them meet environmental goals at the same time.

Some manufacturers are directly seizing the sustainable consulting opportunity, such as Ricoh, which has launched sustainability management services that include carbon balanced printing, energy efficient products and management software.

Cloud print management has yet to see widespread adoption, although momentum is growing. By helping clients move to the cloud, MPS providers can deliver a more flexible print environment that supports greater resource efficiency and the potential of big data analysis to drive performance improvements still further.


5. Maximise ease of recycling and recycled value of components

End-of-life takeback, recycling and reuse schemes are already a common feature of manufacturers’ circular economy approach. Starting with toner cartridges in the 1990s and spurred on by the implementation of the WEEE Directive, which became EU law in 2003, the industry has had plenty of encouragement to develop intelligent waste management programmes. These have progressed over the years from add-on initiatives to become foundational elements of sustainability programmes.

However, there is always more to do, and opportunities for not just environmental, but also commercial advantage. The reuse and recycling economy itself is growing – it is estimated that circular activities such as repair, reuse or recycling generated almost €147 billion in Europe over the three years to 2019. As recovery and re-use technology continues to develop, manufacturers will need to build these advances into their recycling programmes to further embrace circular economy principles and benefit from the commercial benefits.

Quocirca’s latest Executive Briefing explores in depth how the print industry is applying circular economy principles and contains recommendations of what buyers should be looking for when selecting suppliers.


Sumber :
https://quocirca.com/content/5-ways-the-print-industry-can-apply-circular-economy-principles/

Peluang Bisnis dari Sampah Milik Mohammad Baedowy

Menilik Peluang Bisnis dari Sampah Milik Mohammad Baedowy Peraih Penghargaan Kalpataru

Mohammad Baedowy saat mengisi diskusi Business Talk on Friday melalui via aplikasi zoom. (Foto: istimewa)

Menurut data Food and Agriculture Organization, Indonesia setiap tahunnya menghasilkan 69 juta ton sampah. Jumlah yang fantastis tersebut sayangnya tidak diikuti dengan pengolahan yang tepat, sehingga umumnya sampah tersebut menjadi barang tidak berguna dan sumber utama pencemar lingkungan.

Hal itu lah yang membuat Magister Manajemen Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR) menggelar diskusi Business Talk on Friday seri kelima yang bertajuk Peluang Bisnis dari yang Terbuang. Acara yang digelar pada Jumat (14/8/2020) tersebut secara umum ingin membuka pengetahuan peserta mengenai nilai ekonomis dan bisnis dari sampah.

Dimoderatori oleh Dosen Manajemen UNAIR Dr. Tri Siwi Agustina, SE. MSi serta Kepala Magister Manajemen FEB UNAIR Dr. Gancar C. Premananto, peraih penghargaan Kalpataru 2001 Kementerian Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia Mohammad Baedowy hadir untuk membagikan pengalaman dan pengetahuannya dalam membangun bisnis recycling industry Majestic Buana Group.

Menurut Baedowy, sampah adalah salah satu potensi bisnis yang jarang dipahami dan dimanfaatkan oleh masyarakat Indonesia kebanyakan. Maka dari itu, circular economy adalah teori yang coba ia terapkan dalam merintis bisnis pengolahan sampah anorganik, khususnya sampah plastik. Pria yang mengawali karir sebagai auditor internal The Royal Bank of Scotland hingga kemudian banting setir menjadi ‘pemulung’ tersebut mengungkapkan bahwa bisnis daur ulang sampah sejatinya adalah bisnis yang ‘aman’ dengan modal rendah karena barang yang produksi tidak memiliki batas kedaluwarsa dan mudah ditemui.

“Leveling dari bisnis ini dimulai dari scavenger atau pemulung. Di atasnya ada pengepul sebagai bos pemulung. Kemudian sampah yang didapat disortir berdasar jenis dan warna. Setelah itu dicacah dan digiling sampai membentuk biji plastik seukuran beras. Terakhir ya dibuat barang jadi,” ungkap peraih penghargaan ASEAN Young Green Soldier 2011 serta penghargaan Industri Hijau Nasional 2010 Kementerian Perindustrian Indonesia tersebut.

Dalam perusahaan Baedowy, salah satu produk utamanya adalah biji plastik maupun perabot rumah tangga dari daur ulang plastik. Hingga kini, produknya telah diekspor ke mancanegara, khususnya Tiongkok. Omsetnya sendiri telah mencapai ratusan juta rupiah per bulan melalui pengolahan tiga ton biji plastik per harinya.

“Membangun bisnis itu bukan dipikirkan, tapi dilakukan. Ada aksinya. Dulu saya juga sempat hampir gagal, toko tempat produksi saya bahkan sudah ditutup. Mesin mau saya jual. Tapi keberanian untuk kembali mencoba dan pantang menyerah adalah kunci,” tuturnya.

Mesin-mesin yang selama ini digunakan dalam perusahaan Baedowy ia akui merupakan buatannya sendiri yang disesuaikan dengan pengalaman yang telah ia lihat dari daur ulang sampah. Hal tersebut yang membuat mesin daur ulang miliknya memiliki kelebihan, karena memang dibuat dengan mengatasi kekurangan dalam mesin daur ulang biasa.

Bagi mereka yang ingin belajar mengenai industri daur ulang sampah, Baedowy membuka kesempatan belajar yang seluas-luasnya di perusahaannya secara gratis. Hingga kini Majestic Buana Group sendiri telah memiliki mitra dan melakukan pengajaran bisnis dari Sabang sampai Merauke.  Melalui bisnis daur ulang sampah tersebut, Baedowy berharap agar masyarakat maupun pelaku industri dapat lebih memberikan perhatian terhadap pengolahan limbah dan sampah di Indonesia.

“Pelaku industri harus memiliki kesadaran bahwa sampah hasil produksimu, juga merupakan tanggung jawabmu. Sementara itu untuk masyarakat, mereka harusnya memulai usaha daur ulang sampah di tingkat terendah, rumah atau RT,” tandasnya.


Sumber :
http://news.unair.ac.id/2020/08/18/menilik-peluang-bisnis-dari-sampah-milik-mohammad-baedowy-peraih-penghargaan-kalpataru/

Home Made Solely from Recycled Juice and Milk Cartons

Ingenious Company Builds the World’s First Home Made Solely from Recycled Juice and Milk Cartons

By Eliza Theiss -January 25, 2018

As our plastic use continues to grow, the world’s oceans and waterways are becoming increasingly polluted, with devastating environmental consequences.

It’s estimated that by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans if we don’t change our use and disposal of it. Reducing our plastic consumption is as vital as recycling. And since plastic recycling usually produces a lower grade product, innovative ways to create upcycled, functional products is vital in minimizing pollution.

And one ingenious Ecuadorian company is doing exactly that. Focused on Tetrapak milk and juice packages, Ecuaplastic has been a leader in recycling in Ecuador since 2008, transforming Tetrapak waste into low carbon impact products from furniture and handbags to roof covers, floorboards, doors and bricks.

In fact, Ecuaplastic built its 90-square-meter office from upcycled plastic bricks. Manufactured from a recycled plastic and aluminum mixture known as Ecopak, the office was built in just a month and used the equivalent of 310,000 one-liter milk and juice boxes.

With Ecuaplastic focused on upcycling the plastic and aluminum components of milk and juice cartons, the company has partnered with Quito-based Incasa. The latter separates the cardboard from the polyaluminum and recycles it into stationary products.

Ecuaplastic’s dedication to its product reached new heights with the world’s very first home built solely from recycled milk and juice packages. The home diverted 1.2 million milk boxes from landfill and presented a revolutionary new way of building. The home is earthquake proof, resistant to inclement weather and harsh climates, offers excellent sound and heat insulation, cuts down on building time and costs, and is environmentally-friendly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pa4zkmh0Is

Not only does the Pichincha-based company divert about 30 tons of trash from landfills every month, it also produces cost-efficient housing options that offer comfortable living with a significantly lower ecological impact than traditional brick and mortar homes. An Ecopak door that imitates marble uses up about 69 kg of plastic and aluminum, and Ecopak floor boards come in at a cost of only $10 per square meter.

Ecuaplastic team receives the Ecuadorian Environmental “Green Dot” Award from the Ministry of Environment December 2016 credits Ecuaplastic.com

The enthusiastic company recycles more Tetrapak boxes than Ecuador currently sources from selective trash collection. As a result, Ecuaplastic imports about 20% of its materials from neighboring countries, although the team tries to source as close to home as possible in a continuous effort to minimize their carbon footprint.

Ecuaplastic also provides more than 30 full-time jobs in the area and is looking to expand, as Swiss packaging giant Tetrapak aims to recycle 40% of waste generated by its products in Ecuador by 2020.


Sumber :
https://www.goalcast.com/2018/01/25/worlds-first-home-built-solely-from-recycled-juice-and-milk-cartons/

Warming Greenland Ice Sheet Passes Point of No Return

Climate Scientists Sound the Alarm: Warming Greenland Ice Sheet Passes Point of No Return

By OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY AUGUST 15, 2020

Iceberg Near Greenland

Even if the climate cools, study finds, glaciers will continue to shrink.

Nearly 40 years of satellite data from Greenland shows that glaciers on the island have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop today, the ice sheet would continue shrinking.

The finding, published today, Aug. 13, in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, means that Greenland’s glaciers have passed a tipping point of sorts, where the snowfall that replenishes the ice sheet each year cannot keep up with the ice that is flowing into the ocean from glaciers.

“We’ve been looking at these remote sensing observations to study how ice discharge and accumulation have varied,” said Michalea King, lead author of the study and a researcher at The Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. “And what we’ve found is that the ice that’s discharging into the ocean is far surpassing the snow that’s accumulating on the surface of the ice sheet.”


Icebergs Near Greenland

Icebergs near Greenland form from ice that has broken off–or calved–from glaciers on the island. A new study shows that the glaciers are losing ice rapidly enough that, even if global warming were to stop, Greenland’s glaciers would continue to shrink. Credit: Photo courtesy Michalea King

King and other researchers analyzed monthly satellite data from more than 200 large glaciers draining into the ocean around Greenland. Their observations show how much ice breaks off into icebergs or melts from the glaciers into the ocean. They also show the amount of snowfall each year—the way these glaciers get replenished.

The researchers found that, throughout the 1980s and 90s, snow gained through accumulation and ice melted or calved from glaciers were mostly in balance, keeping the ice sheet intact. Through those decades, the researchers found, the ice sheets generally lost about 450 gigatons (about 450 billion tons) of ice each year from flowing outlet glaciers, which was replaced with snowfall.

“We are measuring the pulse of the ice sheet—how much ice glaciers drain at the edges of the ice sheet—which increases in the summer. And what we see is that it was relatively steady until a big increase in ice discharging to the ocean during a short five- to six-year period,” King said.


The researchers’ analysis found that the baseline of that pulse—the amount of ice being lost each year—started increasing steadily around 2000, so that the glaciers were losing about 500 gigatons each year. Snowfall did not increase at the same time, and over the last decade, the rate of ice loss from glaciers has stayed about the same—meaning the ice sheet has been losing ice more rapidly than it’s being replenished.

“Glaciers have been sensitive to seasonal melt for as long as we’ve been able to observe it, with spikes in ice discharge in the summer,” she said. “But starting in 2000, you start superimposing that seasonal melt on a higher baseline—so you’re going to get even more losses.”

Before 2000, the ice sheet would have about the same chance to gain or lose mass each year. In the current climate, the ice sheet will gain mass in only one out of every 100 years.

King said that large glaciers across Greenland have retreated about 3 kilometers on average since 1985—“that’s a lot of distance,” she said. The glaciers have shrunk back enough that many of them are sitting in deeper water, meaning more ice is in contact with water. Warm ocean water melts glacier ice, and also makes it difficult for the glaciers to grow back to their previous positions.

That means that even if humans were somehow miraculously able to stop climate change in its tracks, ice lost from glaciers draining ice to the ocean would likely still exceed ice gained from snow accumulation, and the ice sheet would continue to shrink for some time.

“Glacier retreat has knocked the dynamics of the whole ice sheet into a constant state of loss,” said Ian Howat, a co-author on the paper, professor of earth sciences and distinguished university scholar at Ohio State. “Even if the climate were to stay the same or even get a little colder, the ice sheet would still be losing mass.”

Shrinking glaciers in Greenland are a problem for the entire planet. The ice that melts or breaks off from Greenland’s ice sheets ends up in the Atlantic Ocean—and, eventually, all of the world’s oceans. Ice from Greenland is a leading contributor to sea level rise—last year, enough ice melted or broke off from the Greenland ice sheet to cause the oceans to rise by 2.2 millimeters in just two months.


The new findings are bleak, but King said there are silver linings.

“It’s always a positive thing to learn more about glacier environments, because we can only improve our predictions for how rapidly things will change in the future,” she said. “And that can only help us with adaptation and mitigation strategies. The more we know, the better we can prepare.”

Reference: “Dynamic ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet driven by sustained glacier retreat” by Michalea D. King, Ian M. Howat, Salvatore G. Candela, Myoung J. Noh, Seonsgu Jeong, Brice P. Y. Noël, Michiel R. van den Broeke, Bert Wouters and Adelaide Negrete, 13 August 2020, Communications Earth and Environment.
DOI: 10.1038/s43247-020-0001-2

This work was supported by grants from NASA. Other Ohio State researchers who worked on this study are Salvatore Candela, Myoung Noh and Adelaide Negrete.


Sumber :
https://scitechdaily.com/climate-scientists-sound-the-alarm-warming-greenland-ice-sheet-passes-point-of-no-return/

Creating Conditions for a Circular Economy

Posted on: July 6, 2020

In a linear economy, resources are drawn upon to create products which are used and generate waste. Essentially, it is a throwaway culture – one where consumption goes hand-in-hand with disposal. A circular economy takes a different approach. It, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is: “based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems.”

Reuse and recycling are at the heart of keeping products and materials in use. Products that can be reused may be given a ‘second life’ and become useful all over again. For items that are not reusable the aim should be to recycle component materials to re-enter production processes. This helps them move from a Linear Economy to Circular Economy.

Naturally, a range of stakeholders must play their part:
• Manufacturers must choose materials carefully, with the aims of the circular economy in mind
• Scientists and innovators need resources and support to design materials that will recycle
• Waste management companies must invest in infrastructure and processes to enable recycling – and be encouraged and supported in doing so
• Governments and local authorities must provide simple and convenient mechanisms for used materials to enter recycling processes
• Consumers need to be motivated to engage with recycling initiatives and have access to clear, easy to understand information on what and how to recycle.

Yet, according to recent survey findings, only 34% of adults across four regions – the USA, UK, Mexico and Spain – believe that only half of what they put in recycling bins is recycled, while 31% believe a quarter is recycled and only 3% that everything is recycled.


Consumer confidence

These findings indicate there is work still to be done to build consumer confidence in recycling initiatives. What’s more, it would appear that clarity is needed over the specifics around recycling of plastics: over half of adults (56%) responding to the survey said they find recycling different plastics difficult to understand. In this, consumers in the USA were least confused with 48% finding this difficult, followed by Spain (55%), Mexico (58%) and the highest proportion coming from the UK at 60%.

In the UK, an on-pack recycling label gives an indication when 75% or more of local authorities will collect that type of packaging for recycling and when, conversely, fewer than 50% will. For more detailed guidance consumers have to refer to their own local authority’s information and in 2018, the BBC reported there were over 39 different sets of rules.

Meanwhile, in the US, some recycling programs had to reduce the items they would accept for recycle in response to challenging market conditions. According to The Recycling Partnership, its 2019 State of Curbside survey found that 29% of programs did this, with the most commonly removed items including certain plastics (primarily #3-7 – a range of plastic types used in items including some food containers).


Capitalizing on good intentions

Ultimately, this means not all plastic waste enters recycling processes each year – less than 30% in Europe, the European Commission reported in 2018. Similarly, in the US, recovery rates for packaging and food-service plastic are put at only around 28% (through mechanical recycling and waste-to-energy).

The overwhelming message is that people want to recycle but quite often they simply don’t have the resources to do so. Education is at the heart of our global plastic recycling challenge. At Hi-Cone we’re committed to driving change. Our goal is to get everyone informed and working together towards a circular economy.


To find out how to recycle Hi-Cone’s plastic ring carriers, visit www.ringrecycleme.com, an international recycling program. The RingRecycleMe™ program is a circular economy solution. It gives plastic ring carriers a new life by using materials over and over again. By encouraging recycling over waste, we keep plastic out of landfills, and transform it into a valuable resource.


About the Author

Jennifer Perr is the Global Sustainability Director at Hi-Cone. In this role, she collaborates with the entire value chain to both build and educate key stakeholders about the circular economy. She also leads Hi-Cone’s Vision 2025 team, focused on developing new multi-packaging solutions that continue Hi-Cone’s long history of packaging with positive end-of-life outcomes and that uphold Hi-Cone’s commitment to minimal environmental impact.


Sumber :
https://hi-cone.com/2020/07/creating-conditions-for-a-circular-economy/

Ecuaplastic, House from Tetrapak Milk Packages

Ingenious Company Builds the World’s First Home Made Solely from Recycled Juice and Milk Cartons

By Eliza Theiss -January 25, 2018

As our plastic use continues to grow, the world’s oceans and waterways are becoming increasingly polluted, with devastating environmental consequences.

It’s estimated that by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans if we don’t change our use and disposal of it. Reducing our plastic consumption is as vital as recycling. And since plastic recycling usually produces a lower grade product, innovative ways to create upcycled, functional products is vital in minimizing pollution.

And one ingenious Ecuadorian company is doing exactly that. Focused on Tetrapak milk and juice packages, Ecuaplastic has been a leader in recycling in Ecuador since 2008, transforming Tetrapak waste into low carbon impact products from furniture and handbags to roof covers, floorboards, doors and bricks.

In fact, Ecuaplastic built its 90-square-meter office from upcycled plastic bricks. Manufactured from a recycled plastic and aluminum mixture known as Ecopak, the office was built in just a month and used the equivalent of 310,000 one-liter milk and juice boxes.

With Ecuaplastic focused on upcycling the plastic and aluminum components of milk and juice cartons, the company has partnered with Quito-based Incasa. The latter separates the cardboard from the polyaluminum and recycles it into stationary products.

Ecuaplastic’s dedication to its product reached new heights with the world’s very first home built solely from recycled milk and juice packages. The home diverted 1.2 million milk boxes from landfill and presented a revolutionary new way of building. The home is earthquake proof, resistant to inclement weather and harsh climates, offers excellent sound and heat insulation, cuts down on building time and costs, and is environmentally-friendly.

Not only does the Pichincha-based company divert about 30 tons of trash from landfills every month, it also produces cost-efficient housing options that offer comfortable living with a significantly lower ecological impact than traditional brick and mortar homes. An Ecopak door that imitates marble uses up about 69 kg of plastic and aluminum, and Ecopak floor boards come in at a cost of only $10 per square meter.

The enthusiastic company recycles more Tetrapak boxes than Ecuador currently sources from selective trash collection. As a result, Ecuaplastic imports about 20% of its materials from neighboring countries, although the team tries to source as close to home as possible in a continuous effort to minimize their carbon footprint.

Ecuaplastic also provides more than 30 full-time jobs in the area and is looking to expand, as Swiss packaging giant Tetrapak aims to recycle 40% of waste generated by its products in Ecuador by 2020.

Sumber :

https://www.goalcast.com/2018/01/25/worlds-first-home-built-solely-from-recycled-juice-and-milk-cartons/

Sumber video :

https://www.facebook.com/NasDailyBahasaIndonesia/videos/748713435905280/UzpfSTExNDI4MDY1MDM2MTQ5OToxNzU0ODY4NTA5MDc1NDU/

Generasi Milenial & Hidup Ramah Lingkungan

Kertabumi bantu gaya hidup milenial kurangi sampah

Oleh Natisha Andarningtyas  
Kamis, 21 Februari 2019

Sejumlah komunitas di media sosial berusaha mengajak generasi milenial untuk hidup ramah lingkungan melalui beragam kampanye.

Salah satunya, Kertabumi Recycling Center yang menyebut organisasi mereka sebagai klinik sampah, bukan bank sampah yang mengumpulkan sejumlah sampah bernilai ekonomis.

"Kami klinik sampah. Jadi, kalian bawa sampah yang menurut kalian sudah nggak berguna, nanti kami ubah jadi produk baru," kata pendiri Kertabumi, Iqbal Alexander saat ditemui di acara Bukalapak Trash to Treasure, Kamis.

Sambil berkelakar, Iqbal menyebut dirinya sebagai pemulung karena setiap hari dia mengumpulkan sampah-sampah kering, terutama plastik, dari rumah tangga. Misi Kertabumi sederhana sekaligus rumit, menghilangkan anggapan memilah sampah rumit dan menjadikannya gaya hidup terutama bagi generasi muda.

Iqbal mengaku agak sulit mendekati generasi yang lebih tua untuk mengubah kebiasaan mereka dalam membuang sampah. Untuk mengatasinya, dia mendekati anak-anak muda dengan harapan mereka mau membawa kebiasaan ini ke rumah dan mengajak anggota keluarga lainnya.

"Paling sederhana, pilah sampah basah dan kering. Nanti, sampah yang kering dikasih ke kami," kata dia.

Sampah-sampah kering terutama plastik ini akan disulap menjadi produk bernilai ekonomis, hasil penjualan akan ditaruh di yayasan agar mereka bisa terus membantu masyarakat untuk mengelola sampah.

Kertabumi Recycling Center tidak hanya menerima donasi sampah kering, mereka juga menjemput bola dengan menyediakan layanan gratis jemput sampah ke rumah, demi menumbuhkan gaya hidup mengelola sampah.

"Kami nggak ingin ada pendapat 'mau buang sampah saja harus bayar'," kata Iqbal.

Cara lain mengumpulkan sampah, mereka membuka "dropbox", saat ini baru terdapat di daerah Senayan, Gandaria dan Bintaro. Kertabumi ingin memperluas jangkauan ini melalui kerja sama dengan perusahaan maupun pemerintah agar mereka dapat menempatkan dropbox di sejumlah titik.


Cara memilah sampah

Kertabumi mengajak anak-anak muda untuk mulai memilah sampah di rumah dengan cara yang sederhana, sediakan tempat sampah berbeda untuk sampah kering (anorganik) dan sampah basah (organik).

Banyak orang yang merasa memilah sampah adalah pekerjaan yang rumit karena walau pun sudah dipisah menjadi basah dan kering, kedua kategori itu masing memiliki berbagai turunan. Misalnya sampah kering terdiri dari plastik, kertas, kaca dan lainnya.

Untuk memulainya, menurut Iqbal tidak perlu membuat banyak kategori, cukup sampah basah dan kering. Dia juga memberikan tips agar memilah sampah menjadi aktivitas yang menyenangkan, yaitu pastikan tempat sampah bersih dan tidak berbau supaya tidak merasa jijik ketika membuang sampah.

Aktivitas memilah sampah juga akan bertambah seru dengan melibatkan anggota keluarga untuk mewarnai tempat sampah.

Setelah dipisah antara yang kering dan yang basah, buang sampah organik ke lubang biopori di tanah agar berubah menjadi kompos. Biopori akan membantu menghilangkan aktivitas membakar sampah, yang sudah dilarang dalam Undang-Undang Nomor 18 tahun 2008.

Jika tinggal di apartemen atau rumah yang tidak halaman, membuat sampah organik menjadi kompos tetap bisa dilakukan dan sudah banyak caranya, misalnya dengan memiliki tong komposter berisi mikroorganisme yang akan mengurai sampah, atau dengan pot bunga yang dilubangi.

"Sampah rumah tangga itu 60 persen sisa makanan, seharusnya sudah berakhir di rumah. Kalau itu sudah dilakukan, tinggal 40 persen," kata Iqbal.

Sampah kering seperti botol plastik bisa diberikan ke pemulung atau diberikan ke komunitas seperti Kertabumi.


Barang berkualitas

Selain mengubah paradigma tentang mengelola sampah adalah aktivitas yang rumit, Kertabumi juga ingin menghilangkan anggapan bahwa produk dari material daur ulang berkualitas rendah.

Kertabumi membuat produk dengan pendekatan estetika agar barang-barang hasil daur ulang terlihat menarik. Produk-produk yang dipamerkan Kertabumi paling banyak terbuat dari material plastik, antara lain tas belanja dan dompet kecil

Mereka menggunakan mesin jahit untuk menyambung plastik-plastik tersebut menjadi tas dan agar kualitas barang terjaga.


"Kami ingin menghilangkan paradigma barang daur ulang nggak berguna, makanya, kami, pakai mesin jahit supaya kualitas bagus," kata dia.

Iqbal meyakini gaya hidup mengelola sampah di kalangan anak-anak muda akan terus berkembang, salah satu bukti yang dia rasakan adalah donasi sampah cenderung meningkat setiap bulan. Kertabumi pernah harus menola donasi sampah dan mengalihkannya ke bank sampah.

Tren peduli lingkungan seperti ini juga didukung oleh figur publik, salah satunya bintang iklan Tasya Kamila, yang sudah beberapa tahun belakangan memilah sampah di rumah.

Ketertarikan Tasya, yang juga dulu dikenal sebagai penyanyi cilik, untuk mengelola sampah berawal dari dia diangkat menjadi Duta Lingkungan Hidup oleh, saat itu bernama, Kementerian Kehutanan, ketika dia duduk di bangku SMP.

Saat menjadi Duta Lingkungan Hidup, Tasya banyak berkeliling ke berbagai tempat di Indonesia, dari yang tidak bersih sampai yang sangat maju dalam mengelola sampah.

Tasya akhirnya tertarik untuk belajar mengelola sampah di rumah dan berusaha menularkan kebiasaan ini pada keluarga dan teman-temannya.

Menurut Tasya, memilah sampah di rumah tidak sesulit yang dibayangkan, cukup menyediakan beberapa tempat pembuangan untuk sampah organik, sampah anorganik dan sampah yang tidak bisa didaur ulang seperti pembalut atau popok sekali pakai bekas.

"Sediakan dulu tempat sampah terpisah, nanti ada niat untuk memilah sampah," kata dia.

Tasya sengaja menempatkan tempat sampah anorganik di dekat dapur karena produksi sisa makanan paling banyak berasal dari sana. Setelah terkumpul, dia akan memindahkan sampah bekas makanan ke tong komposter.

Tasya tidak hanya memilah sampah di rumah, dia juga berusaha untuk menggunakan barang-barang yang mendukung kebiasannya untuk tidak banyak memproduksi sampah, misalnya membawa kantung belanja kain saat berbelanja dan menggunakan sedotan yang terbuat dari stainless steel.


Sumber :
https://www.antaranews.com/berita/801216/kertabumi-bantu-gaya-hidup-milenial-kurangi-sampah

How to Build a Circular Economy

by David McGinty David McGinty - 

August 06, 2020
       
Two recycling facility workers next to bales of aluminum cans. Photo by Aaron Minnick | WRI.
A circular economy can help mitigate the climate crisis, and makes social and financial sense. Photo by Aaron Minnick | WRI.


We have a waste problem.

The world threw away around 300 million tons of plastic in 2019, nearly equivalent to the weight of the human population. Scientists expect there could be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. One year's electronic waste weighs in at more than 50 million tons. And while far too many people still go hungry, we waste a third of all the food produced.

Altogether, more than 100 billion tons of resources flow into the economy every year, and more than 60% ends up as waste or greenhouse gas emissions.

While COVID-19 made a significant dent in global consumption, it's not a clear-cut picture. Clothing sales plummeted, but home office and exercise equipment purchases went up; spending in the hospitality industry went down, but groceries increased. The use of single-use plastics increased significantly, while plummeting oil prices reduced the economic incentive for plastic recycling.

The 2008 recession showed us that any fall in consumption is likely to be temporary without a concerted effort to make longer-term changes.

This isn't only about consumers buying too much and recycling too little. Our global economy is built on a "take-make-waste" model where natural resources are extracted, used, and then end up as waste. This inefficient model is pushing our planet to the brink, driving the climate crisis, and depleting the resources we need to support more equitable and thriving communities in the future.


Benefits of Building a Circular Economy

We need to shift our way of thinking and build a circular economy — where waste and pollution are designed out in the first place; products and materials stay in use for much longer; and natural systems can regenerate.

Moving toward a circular economy would make a crucial contribution toward preserving the environment and mitigating the climate crisis. Creating a circular economy for five key sectors — cement, aluminum, steel, plastics and food — could cut CO2 emissions by 3.7 billion tons in 2050, equivalent to eliminating current emissions from all forms of transport.

This is not just an environmental issue. It simply makes social and economic sense to make better use of scarce resources by designing a system to avoid waste and keep materials in use for longer. Consider the fact that there is 100 times more gold in a ton of discarded mobile phones than there is in a ton of gold ore. If we reduce food loss and waste by just a quarter, we could feed 870 million hungry people.

Research shows that creating a circular economy offers a $4.5 trillion economic opportunity by avoiding waste, while also creating business growth and employment opportunities. The goal is to break the link between economic growth and the use of natural resources so that our global economic wellbeing is not tied to environmental destruction.


3 Ways to Transition Toward a Circular Economy
There are three ways to address our rate of consumption:

1. Consume Less
The circular economy focuses on better use of natural resources, and the simple fact is that many of us consume far too much. During the 20th century, the world's use of raw materials grew at twice the rate of population growth. In a world where people in the richest countries consume 10 times as much as the poorest, there is a need for many of us to consume less and many others to consume more.

For companies, consumption issue is often the "elephant in the boardroom," as the fundamental principle of most business models is selling more products to more people. Disrupting that mentality will require business innovation, policy support and consumer demand.

In wealthy countries as well as in the growing global middle class, there is a very important role for behavior change campaigns and policy incentives to nudge behavior in the right direction, for instance around fast fashion, plastics and food waste.

Cutting the use of single-use plastic bags is a common focus, with 127 countries having introduced some form of ban or tax to regulate their use. One of the strongest policies is in Kenya, where 80% of the population stopped using single-use plastic bags after the government introduced a ban in 2017.

2. Consume Better
A circular economy is not only about consuming less; it's also about consuming better. For consumers, this can mean choosing versions of products that have been produced in more sustainable ways or that can be recycled. It can also mean changing what we consume — for example by shifting to a plant-based diet, which offers emissions and other natural resource benefits over meat-heavy meals.

Consumer awareness of sustainability is on the rise globally, with the majority of consumers saying they expect brands to do what is right. Consumer pressure is a crucial part of the picture in encouraging businesses to change their practices and governments to introduce favorable policies.

Consuming "better" can also mean avoiding purchasing altogether and shifting to circular models such as sharing platforms. When you consider that the average car is parked 95% of the time and that the average power drill is used for less than 15 minutes in its entire lifetime, it's easy to see the potential for sharing platforms to cut down the use of materials.

Streaming services are another example of consuming better without necessarily making sacrifices. The last decade has seen a welcome decrease in the production and consumption of physical CDs and DVDs. This behavioral shift hasn't even made a dent on our way of life — we simply consume our entertainment in a better, more sustainable way.

This shift toward better consumption offers huge opportunities for innovative companies to adapt to new business models.

3. Create Systemic Change
Consumers can only do so much when the entire economy is built on the take-make-waste model. What we need is systemic change, so that sustainability doesn't only depend on consumer choices.

The core principle of a circular economy is that products should be designed to last, with component parts or materials that can be used again.

There is a clear economic case for this model for large machines such as photocopiers, MRI scanners or agricultural equipment. These machines have high upfront costs and are made from very valuable materials, so many companies are successfully using circular models where they take the product back and refurbish it or repurpose the materials. The key will be scaling this model and extending it to a far broader range of consumer-facing products.

There is much to be done on the policy side to incentivize circularity at the systems level. There must be a major shift to incentivize or require the use of secondary or recycled materials, for example by placing taxes on products that use only virgin materials. The UK has taken a step in this direction by introducing a tax on plastic packaging that has less than 30% recycled content.

There must also be a major investment in infrastructure so that recycling can be expanded or even compulsory. One success story comes from the Republic of Korea, where introducing a compulsory food waste recycling program and a ban on food waste in landfills led to an impressive 95% of waste being recycled into compost, animal feed, biogas or solid fuel. The proposed European Green Deal sets out many similar policies, including a Circular Economy Action Plan.

As more and more governments introduce policies that encourage recycling and reuse, and as consumer awareness around sustainability continues to grow, companies that adopt circular business models will find themselves at a clear business advantage.

Circularity Will Mean a Better Economy for All of Us
Making the shift to a circular economy won't be easy. But the reward — a world where people, nature and economies can all thrive — will be worth the effort. We all need to come together — governments, policymakers, civil society and communities — to be better consumers.


Sumber :
https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/08/how-to-circular-economy