INNOVATION September-October 2014

Linear Economy

Take > Make > Dispose

who pay costly disposal fees when eventually demolishing a build- ing made of low quality materials that cannot be reused or recycled. Renault no longer designs cars to go to the wrecking yard. As a supporter of frugal Jugaad innovation, Renault designs for reuse, repair and re-manufacturing. At the Renault Choisy-le-Roi factory in France, every engine that leaves is made of 38% pre-used tested parts. This business model gives Renault an edge on the competition, since innovations in mechanical and industrial engineering made the cost of remanufacturing the engines lower than building new ones. The APEGBC Annual Conference will feature professional development presentations illustrating the contribution of various engineering disciplines to a zero waste economy. • High-solids anaerobic digestion at Harvest Power reduces the amount of equipment necessary to digest food scraps and produce high-value biogas and soil amendment compared to conventional anaerobic digestion systems. • Trenchless construction reduces the amount of excavation waste gen- erated and saves the energy that would have been invested to bring the excavated fill back up to specifications for recycling or reuse. • HydroRun Technologies will demonstrate how mechanical and software innovation led to a massive reduction in the amount of steel used in collecting energy from free-flowing rivers. • Bicycle and car-sharing services are replacing underused vehicles and bikes parked in garages to get the most use out of the resources involved in manufacturing bikes and cars. • The engineer’s role in the zero waste economy will describe strate- gies for resource-efficient design. v Further Reading: www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/2013-08-18/14-smart-inventions- inspired-by-nature-biomimicry.html#slide2 www.jugaadinnovation.com/ Karen Storry and Esther Bérubé are professional engineers in Metro Vancouver’s Solid Waste Services. They work with municipalities, busi- nesses, and industry to promote waste reduction and recycling of residen- tial, commercial, and building materials. They will be presenting a session on this topic in this article at the 2014 APEGBC Annual Conference in Vancouver, BC.

waste

technical and biological nutrients all mixed up with little to no value

Circular Economy

technical nutrients

biological nutrients

and impending resource constraints are making the circular economy increasingly more attractive to industry. Unilever, Renault, Kingfisher (the UK’s equivalent of Home Depot), Philips, and Cisco are just a few of the big names that have already started to invest in more circular business practices. There is a vast need for engineers to help redesign almost everything to integrate with the circular economy. How Does the Circular Economy Translate to the Real World? There are already several circular economy examples that touch on every engineering discipline. (APEGBC’s upcoming conference will showcase innovative examples from British Columbia.) Bio-Bean, an energy company in London, collects spent cof- fee beans and transforms them into bio-fuel, with contributions from energy, environmental, chemical, mechanical, and trans- portation engineering. Phillips now sells lighting as a service. Phillips CEO Frans van Houten explains that municipal customers in Singapore no longer have to worry about the street lighting. Phillips installs the equipment, maintains it, and makes sure the lighting infrastruc- ture is designed to last with low maintenance, with the input from electrical engineers. Delta Development Group, an independently owned Dutch real-estate company, employed a new cradle-to-cradle development process for Delta’s Park 2020 project near Amsterdam. Owner and CEO Coert Zachariasse figured out how to create value for his com-

pany in a way that disrupts his competi- tion. Instead of having the contractor buy the construction materials, Delta contracts directly with suppliers to optimize the quality of the material that Delta would own to ensure that it can be reused or re- cycled when the material no longer serves its original purpose. To get the best quality material available, Delta gives the suppliers its budget and asks them to compete on material quality. Delta uses specific criteria to evaluate materials based on quality, not price. In this new business paradigm, Delta’s buildings have become high-quality- material banks, thanks to forward-thinking construction management professionals and structural engineers. Delta now has an economic advantage over its competitors,

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