Extending Production Waste Life Cycle and Energy Saving by Eco-Innovation and Eco-Design: The Case of Packaging Manufacturing

Abstract

Resource efficiency is seen as a constituent of sustainable production and consumption, where yesterday's waste is today's raw material. In this context, our main goal is to track eco-innovative ways in the framework of circular economy to reuse production waste as eco-designed smart new products. The corrugated board and cardboard packaging manufacturing was found as one of the most available and proficient industries in applying the circular way to extend the life cycle of raw materials and save energy by combining economic and environmental targets in an eco-efficient manner. We have identified the need of a Romanian Manufacturer (RM), equipped with modern facilities and technologies to produce corrugated board and packaging, and also opened for knowledge transfer focused on the generation of economic benefits and environmental advantages by closing the production loop through reusing the production waste generated in the form of cardboard strips, edges and other production waste. Then, we developed and applied a challenging work-plan to create a new environmentally friendly and sustainable re-engineered product required by the market, by extending cardboard waste life cycle based on an eco-innovative approach, put in practice by following eco-design principles. In order to enable RM decision making process, we have performed Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) to identify and assess: (i) the environmental impacts induced by the reuse of waste production as raw materials for the product redesigned based on eco-innovation and eco-design concepts; (ii) the total cost performance in terms of materials and energy of the alternative proposed to be implemented in corrugated board and packaging manufacturing. These tools would enable the valorization of production waste so as to close the loop and extend the life cycle of cardboard in an eco-efficient way. In perspective, these production wastes are intended to be revalorized as subassemblies for building sectors.