Most forward-thinking organisations – and individuals – now have sustainability firmly on their agenda.
But the actions of one business or one consumer can often seem trivial in the face of this unprecedented global challenge.
This is why the idea of strategic sustainability – viewing the sustainability challenge through the widest possible lens – was the approach taken at SCI’s second Where Science Meets Business conference, held at its headquarters in London.
The event brought together academia and business to look at sustainability from all possible angles.
Across the day, packed with speakers talking about the science of sustainability and its application in industry, it became clear that there is an opportunity to create the foundation on which sustainable health, agricultural, transport and energy systems can be built.
Building a sustainable circular economy
Modifying existing systems and frameworks will take time and likely quite a bit of encouragement to get wider public buy-in, not least in how we deal with carbon and its replacement or reuse.
‘Biological routes are not a panacea, they will not replace fossil fuels,’ said Sharon Todd, SCI’s CEO, opening the event. ‘The fact is, if we are to have a sustainable circular economy, then we need to address renewable carbon.’
Dealing with the existing sources of carbon in its myriad of forms, and using recycled carbon, for example, in the form of waste from industrial processes, requires not only new chemistry but new supporting structures. ‘Everything from regulatory frameworks, measurement tools, and guidance all need to be developed and put in place to ensure our sustainable future,’ Todd added.
As a demonstration of the complexity; Todd highlighted the Flue2Chem project which over the last two years has seen eighteen partners collaborating to demonstrate the feasibility of taking waste carbon dioxide from industrial processes and converting it tohousehold materials such as cleaning products.
Projects such as Flue2Chem highlight the fact that business, academia and government have a central role to play in steering the discussion and realisation of a more sustainable world.
But as Professor Luuk van der Wielen, Bernal Institute University of Limerick and TU Delft, stressed there is a need for societal engagement.
‘Sustainability isn’t a concept but an activity, we need to engage people from outside of our academic and industrial walls.’
This sentiment was echoed by Dr Nazia Habib, Founder and Research Centre Director for the Centre for Resilience and Sustainable Development University of Cambridge. Speaking from COP29, which took place in Azerbaijan, she added: ‘As experts we need to interact, and bring our lived and professional experiences to the discussions. I would say that academics are struggling break out of their traditional silos, but the need for the cross disciplinary collaboration is essential now.’
Image: BigPixel Photo /Shutterstock
While considering the need to engage a wider range of voices in the sustainability discussion, Professor Louise Manning of the Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology reminded delegates that it was important to be aware of the trends that wider society was following, which rarely have anything to do with sustainability or sustainable development goals. ‘We need to think about how we engage with people,’ she said: ‘We have a challenge in how we communicate sustainability.’
One big problem is that that there are many competing ideas of exactly what sustainability should mean and how it should be measured.
‘The real challenge we have is that on this planet we are living beyond our means and we have a certain set of resources and we are using them and we have to start thinking about the whole way that we operate,’ she said. ‘But that’s also an opportunity,’ she said– for organisations to think about being more efficient and having better practices.
Aside from the societal challenges, Manning pointed to the steps being taken across agriculture to embrace science and technology to ensure the sector’s sustainability. ‘The agricultural sector is adopting land management strategies that are looking 30 years ahead. A sustainable future requires a collaborative effort that looks at policy, economics and finance.’
A new vision for plastic?
Professor Tony Ryan, from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sheffield, argued how efforts to use processes such as anaerobic digestion or composting of green plastics would not resolve the world’s plastics problems.
He also pointed the problems caused by how many countries deal with their plastic waste right now.’ Currently 50 million tonnes of plastic ends up in the sea and much of our waste is sent to countries that do not have the capacity to deal with it,’ noted Ryan.
But looking at the problem of plastics waste in a different way Ryan posed the idea that plastics could perhaps be considered a carbon sequestration technology asking delegates to consider the value that is put on all kinds of plastics; be that the value to industry or society.
‘Seventy-five percent of plastics are based on a carbon-carbon backbone. Why not go back and regard them as solidified hydrocarbon and collect them by giving them value as carbon sequestration and regard them as neo-fossil fuels?’ said Ryan.
There is without doubt a pressure on the whole chemicals supply chain to move to sustainable production and practices. Tony Heslop, EMEA Regional Lead Sustainability at BASF put further emphasis on the collaborative effort with the multinational working with its customers to help quantify and certify the carbon footprint of its products. ‘We are sharing our methodologies with our peers,’ said Heslop. ‘We have a number of drop-in solutions that have identical quality and properties compared to the standard BASF products, and have been certified carbon neutral cradle-to-gate,’ Heslop said.
Looking at the challenges from the perspective of another international company, Phil Ruxton, Chief Sustainability Officer at Croda noted that the focus on sustainability had to be achieved via incremental improvements with process design and development carried out to ensure that the customer received what they wanted at reasonable cost.
Unilever is among the coalition of businesses calling for collaborative efforts to resolve the plastic use and recycling conundrum. ‘What we need now is a level playing field where producers, processors and users and consumers understand what is at stake and also have a stake in creating the solutions,’ Unilever’s Research & Development Director Mark Newman noted.
For more on Where Science Meets Business 2024, look out for the full coverage in the next issue of C&I magazine.
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