The REMake project: Recycling and resource efficiency in manufacturing Forum on Environmental Goods & Services and Green Business Models Brussels, 15 October 2010

The REMake consortium A public-private partnership comprising: o National and regional innovation agencies; o Industrial associations; o Technical centres; o Innovation experts. REMake partners come from Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain and the UK.

Be more profitable by simply using less resources Enable manufacturing SMEs to: o Access state-of-art expertise in recycling and resource efficiency; o Assess their resource savings potential; o Develop and test innovation vouchers, as an un- bureaucratic innovation support tool on resources efficiency and life-cycle approaches.

Recycling and Resource Efficiency in manufacturing In a medium-sized manufacturing company, material consumption represents 40% of operating costs (personnel costs = 20%). Major gains are achieved tackling RRE at three key levels of innovation: o Product design; o Process efficiency; o Value chain optimisation.

CASE STUDIES

Redesign of electric ovens - France Problem: o Operational costs; o Environmental impacts. Measures: o Redesign of the ovens using a set of environmental indicators; o Reduction of the number of components (36%) and external volume (25%). Results: o Reduction of effluents (44%); o Reduction of water (18%) and energy (35%) use; o The ovens are now 3 times less noisy.

Brecon Mineral Water - UK Problem: o Error-prone packaging schemes; o Unnecessary use of resources. Measures: o Lightweighting the bottles by 1g each and redesigning them, increasing its number per pallet; o Reduction of the thickness of low-density polyethylene that wraps multi-packs; o Reduction of label size and changing in the gluing system. Results: o Saving of 84 tonnes of plastic and 10 lorry loads in a year; o Saving of 1 tonne of paper and 60-70% of glue.

Closed-loop recycling in households - UK Problem: o Operational costs; o Environmental impacts. Measures: o Use of 100% recycled plastic (recovered from domestic fridges) in washing machines access panel; Results: o Same production cost for the recycled parts; o 5% saving in raw material costs; o Significant amount of CO 2 emissions avoided; o Savings in cumulative cost and raw materials over the parts produced each year.

Metal processor - Germany Problem: o High quantity of chipping waste; o High wear of tools and instruments. Measures: o Application of pre-casted raw material instead of solids. Results: o 50% reduction of waste material; o Decreased wear of tools by lowering chipping power; o Efficiency improvement by reduction of processing time; o 2.37 Mio possible savings; o 13.7% increase of annual rate of return.

Packaging process - Germany Problem: o Inappropriate transport; o Error-prone packaging schemes; o Mistakes at protection and handling. Measures: o Optimizing loads of pallets; o Improved briefing of the staff members. Results: o Reduction of damages within storage and transport; o 100,000 possible savings; o 15% increase of annual rate of return.

Reuse/recycling of End-Of-Life Vehicles (ELVs) - Hungary Problem: o Improve the efficiency of the dismantling of ELVs; Measures: o New high-tech ICT based solution to select, separate and reutilize valuable parts from the ELVs; o Increasing the communication among SMEs. Results (in a particular company): o Average ELVs dismantled per day increased from 5 to 7-8; o The value of the selected and dismantled car parts increased about 80%; o The trust and cooperation among similar SMEs has increased.

INNOVATION VOUCHERS

Innovation vouchers for manufacturing SMEs Access to technical and business expertise on recycling and resource efficiency o Analysis of material flows; o Assessment of savings potentials; o Life-cycle analysis and eco-design support; o Incorporation of recycled content into products; o Implementation of technological innovation measures; o Management of eco-innovation and financing solutions.

French call opened in April 2010 German call opened in September 2010 UK, Italy, Navarra planned for autumn 2010 Valencia planned for beginning 2011

REMake: Be more profitable, by simply using less resources