Elsevier

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 127, 20 July 2016, Pages 438-450
Journal of Cleaner Production

Material efficiency in manufacturing: swedish evidence on potential, barriers and strategies

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.03.143Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Importance of higher waste segregation for improving material efficiency.

  • Presentation of barriers towards improved material efficiency in a new categorization.

  • Material efficiency barriers are mainly internal.

  • Lack of material efficiency strategy implementation in the manufacturing companies.

Abstract

Improved material efficiency is a key to improve the circular economy and capturing value in industry. Material efficiency reduces the generation of industrial waste, the extraction and consumption of resources, and energy demands and carbon emissions. However, material efficiency in the manufacturing sector, as a means of improving the recyclability, reusability, reduction and prevention of industrial waste, is little understood. This study aims to investigate, on a micro-level, further material efficiency improvement opportunities, barriers and strategies in selected manufacturing companies in Sweden, focusing on increasing waste segregation into high quality circulated raw material. Improvement opportunities at large global manufacturing companies are investigated; barriers hindering material efficiency improvement are identified and categorized at two levels; and strategies that have been deployed at manufacturing companies are reviewed. Empirical findings reveal (1) further potential for improving material efficiency through higher segregation of residual material from mixed and low quality fractions (on average, 26% of the content of combustible waste, in weight, was plastics; 8% and 6% were paper and cardboard, respectively); (2) the most influential barriers are within budgetary, information, management, employee, engineering, and communication clusters; (3) a lack of actual material efficiency strategy implementation in the manufacturing companies. According to our analysis, the majority of barriers are internal and originate within the manufacturing companies, therefore they can be managed (and eradicated if possible) with sufficient resources in terms of man hours, education and investment, better operational and environmental (waste) management, better internal communication and information sharing, and deployment of material efficiency strategies.

Introduction

Increasing material efficiency is one key to reducing the generation of large volumes of industrial waste, the extraction and consumption of resources, and energy demands and carbon emissions. Industrial waste generation and raw material consumption are critical concerns given their impact on the environment, especially as the global population grows and demand for products increases. Material efficiency relates to the amount of material used in manufacturing a product (Peck and Chipman, 2007); it can be improved by manufacturing practices using less materials per product and/or generating less waste per product (Abdul Rashid et al., 2008).

In response to the need for increased material efficiency in manufacturing, many strategies (plans, methods, or series of maneuvers) have been developed. These include material flow cost accounting (e.g., Kokubu and Kitada, 2015), eco-efficiency (e.g., Ehrenfeld, 2005) and cleaner production (e.g., Almeida et al., 2013). However, the evidence regarding these material efficiency strategies' actual applications in manufacturing is not clear (Abdul Rashid et al., 2008, Bey et al., 2013). Barriers to increasing material efficiency have received relatively little attention. Moreover, among material efficiency options (Allwood et al., 2011), material substitution has received the most attention (Milford et al., 2011), while enhancing the homogeneity of generated waste to increase recyclability and reusability has been under-researched.

Swedish manufacturing industries have successfully increased their material efficiency in recent years. In 2012, the total generated waste from the Swedish manufacturing industry amounted to 6.2 million tons, approximately 4% of the country's total generated waste, as shown in Fig. 1. This figure is half that of 2004, when manufacturing waste accounted for 12 million tons and 14% of the total generated waste in Sweden (Eurostat, 2014, Naturvårdsverket, 2014). Meanwhile, Sweden's economic activity in manufacturing (in constant 2005 prices) has remained at the same level, as shown in Fig. 1. Note that manufacturing waste decreases even as economic activity increases, i.e., between 2005–2007 and 2009–2011. Nevertheless, even with a decrease in total waste generated, the potential value of this waste as a secondary raw material still requires improvement.

In the light of the insufficient detail on the actual applications of material efficiency strategies in manufacturing, the lack of focused studies on industrial waste homogeneity, and dispersed few studies on material efficiency barriers, in combination with the reported successful decrease in waste generation on a macro-level in the Swedish manufacturing industry, our study aims to investigate, on a micro-level, further material efficiency improvement opportunities, barriers and strategies in selected manufacturing companies in Sweden. The specific focus of the study is on increased waste segregation into high quality circulated raw material. To fulfill this aim, the following research questions are addressed: Can further material efficiency improvements within selected Swedish manufacturing companies be achieved via better waste segregation (higher homogenous waste quality)? If so, what barriers prevent manufacturing companies from achieving material efficiency improvements, and what strategies are these companies currently using?

To investigate opportunities, barriers and strategies in material efficiency on a qualitative and detailed micro-level, six manufacturing companies were selected as an empirical base. Data were gathered using interviews, observations and documents, and contrasted with literature analyses. Our results show that there is further potential for material efficiency improvements in the companies we studied, especially in terms of increasing waste segregation into high quality circulated raw material. The barriers currently hindering higher material efficiency are identified and categorized into the categories of Budgetary, Informational, Social, Technological, Economic, Organizational and Legal. Furthermore, material efficiency strategies and their deployment in manufacturing companies are evaluated. A lack of tangible implementation of a material efficiency strategy among the manufacturing companies was concluded. The majority of material efficiency strategies are generic, with a broad perspective (national, sectorial or supply chain scale), rather than focused on operations and processes within a manufacturing plant.

Section snippets

Theoretical background

A number of studies have drawn attention to the field of sustainable manufacturing (e.g., Rahimifard and Clegg, 2007, Dubey et al., 2015, Garetti and Taisch, 2012, Wiktorsson et al., 2008). Contributions to this field also include analyses of product development/eco-design (e.g., Lindahl, 2006), and the end-of-life phase (e.g., Sundin and Bras, 2005) of the product life cycle. However, the manufacturing phase of the product life cycle has been minimally researched (Despeisse, 2010); this is

Materials and methods

To fulfill our research aim on a micro-level (i.e., the investigation of material efficiency improvement opportunities, barriers and strategies in selected manufacturing companies in Sweden) we performed three empirical studies at six manufacturing companies. The research design, encompassing three phases of literature and empirical study, is illustrated in Fig. 3.

Study A: industrial waste and residual material management

The study of industrial waste and residual material management at four companies was conducted in two steps. Initially, the overall segment sorting rate at the operation departments of the four companies (I–IV) was calculated. The calculation was based on the waste statistics for non-hazardous waste segment to determine how well the wasted materials are segregated into highly homogenous fractions, as shown in Table 3. The material segment comprises metals, inert materials and other non-inert

Industrial waste and residual material segregation

The initial empirical results from the segment sorting rate (Table 3) revealed that the segregation rate varied among the different companies and materials. The volumes of inert materials (sand, glass, etc., to landfill) were low in the investigated operations and thus were omitted from further analysis. The initial observations also showed that the majority of the industrial waste fractions at the companies are segregated in accordance with local standards.

However, through detailed analysis of

Discussion

The discussion is structured according to the two overall research questions, focusing on improvement and barriers.

Conclusions

In light of the successful reduction in waste generation within Sweden's manufacturing sector, this study revealed that further economic and environmental improvement opportunities for material efficiency can be realized by segregating current material fractions into higher homogenous fractions. Empirical results at selected manufacturing companies clearly showed high proportions of PE (74%) and PET (11%) in plastic bins as well as cast iron (37%) in metal containers. The majority of

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