In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we learned how certain design approaches and technologies enable sustainable operations and carbon-emissions reductions. Here, we learn how industry is working to reduce other waste and quantify the effects of their efforts.
By Lisa Eitel | Executive editor
MEET THE EXPERTS
Anant Bhat | Director — Industrial strategy and portfolio management • Schaeffler Americas
Brad Dineley | VP of operations and strategy • Schaeffler Americas
Brian Burke | Product manager III • Bishop-Wisecarver Corp.
Brian Dengel | General manager • KHK USA Inc.
Chris Caldwell | Product manager – material handling • Yaskawa Motoman
David Mayers | Sales director • IDS Imaging Development Systems Inc.
Francois Minec | Global head of polymers • HP Personalization and 3D Printing
Gian Sachdev | Marketing head – Americas demand generation • Cognex
Josh Leath | Senior product manager — thermal • Yaskawa Motoman
Lane Persky | Chief marketing officer • Rotor Clip
Linda Weber | Global sustainability engagement manager • Jabil
Michael White | Vice President of regional business units and engineering • Schaeffler Americas
Mike Korkowski | Operations manager • LinMot USA
Ori Yudilevich | CTO • MaterialsZone
Patrick Varley | Product marketing manager — robotics • Mitsubishi Electric Automation Inc.
Ramon Guitart | VP of engineering — electric motors • Infinitum
Richard Halstead | President • Empire Magnetics Inc.
Robert Cachro | Program manager — growth and innovation • Dynapar
Robert Luchars | Executive VP • ECM PCB Stator Technology
Stacy Mendez | Director of ESG and global strategic planning • Avnet
Yugi Ikeuchi | GM — Engineering and app development • IKO International
Any efforts to increase recycling and otherwise reduce waste?
Guitart: Our motors are designed with sustainability and circularity in mind. Infinitum motors replace the heavy iron core found in traditional stators with a lightweight printed circuit board (PCB) stator that is ten times more reliable. Using a PCB means the motor can be smaller, lighter, and quieter than motors that use conventional iron core stators. We also etch copper onto the PCB for a 66% reduction in copper compared to conventional motors. What’s more, Infinitum motor housings, rotors, and stators, can be reused multiple times.
Toyota Motor North America and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory are researching ways to directly recycle lithium-ion batteries. Work will focus on manganese, nickel, and cobalt cathodes.
Mendez: One increasingly common waste-management strategy (where local markets allow) is zero-waste-to-landfill contracts. These contracts allow incineration of nonrecyclable waste for energy production. For example, Avnet currently holds zero-waste-to-landfill contracts in the U.K., some European facilities, and Singapore. Two other tangible initiatives include onsite waste sorting (to raise recycling rates at distribution centers and large office sites) and distribution-related packaging.
Weber: There’s still work to be done in the areas of recycling and circular-economy partnerships. Companies have much to gain by keeping products and materials in the value chain rather than sending them to a landfill or even incineration.
For example, Jabil recently acquired Retronix, a provider of component recovery, reballing, retinning, and component authenticity testing services, to help our end users recycle and reuse electronic components. These services enable the safe extraction of embedded valuable components from printed circuit boards (PCBs) and other electronics to minimize waste, create new value channels, and mitigate future component obsolescence — all while maintaining security, quality, and certification standards.
One renewable-energy expansion at a Millers Branch Solar Facility in Haskell County, Texas brings 180 MW more sustainable power online. Image: Southern Power
Sachdev: Our commitment to sustainability starts at home with a focus on reducing energy usage in our own facilities. Even as our revenues and employee base grew, we reduced energy consumption in our owned facilities by 3% from 2020 to 2022. Our contract manufacturers and distribution centers are ISO 9001:2015 compliant, and we conduct 20 to 30 supplier audits per year that investigate their workplace standards, business practices, and environmental impact.
Dineley: Through our corporate sustainability program, Schaeffler targets year-over-year efficiency gains via widespread adoption of variable speed drives; optimizing each location’s compressed air and temperature setpoints; and implementing energy-management software, benchmarking, and continuous-improvement projects. Water consumption is reduced through widespread adoption of closed-loop systems and continuous improvement activities that are also managed through Schaeffler’s sustainability program.
Our objective is to eliminate waste to landfill in each of our sites across the Americas, and we’ve already achieved this milestone in several locations. Our focus is on reuse and recycling programs as well as continuous-improvement activities managed through our Sustainability Program.
Where are hydrogen-based applications a suitable solution?
Halstead: Hydrogen is not truly a fuel but rather an energy-storage medium. As a large-capacity system to store energy at utility scales, it can be very cost effective. Given the challenges of flammability, pressure vessels, and hydrogen embrittlement, small-scale applications can turn out to be quite expensive.
Image: Dreamstime
M. White: Schaeffler has decades of experience producing high volumes of high-precision components using lean manufacturing practices for the automotive industry. We entered the hydrogen business in 2021 when it established hydrogen as a global strategic business sector. Then we began commercial development of bipolar plates and polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells for automotive and mobile applications as well as PEM electrolyzer stacks for industrial markets. Our core competencies (including precision metal stamping and forming, coating, welding, joining, and assembly) are suited to producing bipolar plates and electrolyzer stacks in commercial volumes.
We’re actively engaged with industrial end users to explore suitable industry applications for our PEM hydrogen electrolyzers. We several potential use cases in hydrogen fueling stations for industrial, automotive and transit applications; bulk hydrogen production for industrial process industries (as for the production of green steel and aluminum, cement, and fertilizers); generation of hydrogen fuel for mobile applications (as for mobile material-handling and port cargo-handling equipment); synthetic fuels for aviation, freight rail, and ships; hydrogen for inter-seasonal energy storage and electric grid stabilization; hydrogen as an industrial gas as already used in industrial processes; and hydrogen to replace natural gas for firing heat-treating and hot-forging furnaces.
More specifically, distributed hydrogen fueling stations support mobile material-handling equipment with rapid adoption of hydrogen-powered vehicles such as mobile forklifts used inside manufacturing facilities near people. These fueling stations — to be powered by rooftop solar arrays or clean, renewable energy supplied via the electrical grid — will produce hydrogen at end users’ manufacturing facilities.
Another possible use case is to utilize green hydrogen as a storage media for emergency backup power at data centers or cellphone towers.
Does your company have Green Leaf or other certifications?
Dengel: Our company is ISO:14001 certified. As such, we do our best to reuse, recycle and reduce waste throughout our facilities.
Weber: While Jabil has not pursued Green Leaf certification specifically, we have achieved various other sustainability certifications that pertain to our industry, such as ISO 14001 for environmental management systems; green-building certifications such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED); and International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) for circular economy.
Jabil is a founding member of the Responsible Business Alliance, the world’s largest industry coalition dedicated corporate responsibility in global supply chains. Our external audits performed through the Validated Assessment Process had an average score of 170 during fiscal year 2023 (equating to a Silver recognition level). In addition to annual sustainability reporting, we voluntarily disclose data to platforms such as EcoVadis — a well-known universal sustainability ratings and intelligence solution. In 2023, we achieved a Gold status rating — putting Jabil in the top 5% of all participating.
At the recent Sea Otter Expo, Electric-bike maker Vanpowers released a new series of commuter, all-terrain, and lightweight gravel e-bikes. The e-bikes feature a hub motor lock, emergency SOS, vibration detector, real-time GPS tracking, and geofencing for anti-theft protection. Image: Vanpowers
Minec: To become the most sustainable and just technology company by 2023, HP firmly believes that company growth is tied to engagement in sustainable business practices. As a committed member of the Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association (AMGTA) HP is dedicated to advancing sustainable manufacturing practices within our organization and throughout our network of partners and end users.
Within our own company, this takes the form of implementing sustainable alternatives to traditional methods wherever possible — incorporating an innovation-first mindset with a sustainability-driven edge. Consider the buildings of HP’s 3D Printing and Digital Manufacturing Center of Excellence in Barcelona. At the center, hundreds of experts in systems engineering, data intelligence, software, materials science, design, 3D printing, and digital manufacturing are united and encouraged to collaborate on transformational solutions for manufacturing. Designed with environmental impact in mind, the center has achieved LEED certification.
Ikeuchi: IKO is committed to providing a sustainable and healthy work environment for employees as well as transparent value-based practices for our business partners. Last year, IKO conducted a review with EcoVadis, an independent international company that rates organizations’ sustainability management performance in four main areas: Environmental impact, labor and human rights standards, ethics, and procurement practices. IKO earned a Bronze rating and will continue to focus on improvements to increase our rating in the future. Through initiatives like this and others, IKO demonstrates commitment to making continuous improvements to responsible and sustainable business practices.
Weber: Companies recognize the importance of integrating sustainability into their business strategy, so Jabil’s end users and supply chain partners routinely ask us for information about our sustainability goals and progress. For many of our partners, sustainability is a key requirement of our collaboration. Of particular interest to them is our climate action plan and how we’re reducing greenhouse gas emissions in our internal operations and with our logistics and transportation.
We’re even beginning to incorporate sustainability metrics into contracts with end users who want to ensure that their products are being manufactured with renewable energy and minimal waste to incur the lowest possible carbon footprint. Jabil’s sustainability data is publicly available to all our stakeholders through our annual sustainability report and via reporting to organizations such as the CDP and EcoVadis.
Manufacturing solutions providers such as Jabil have a unique perspective in the sustainability landscape. While we proactively manage our own environmental footprint, supporting our end users has provided us with deep knowledge of the unique sustainability challenges faced by a wide variety of industries, as well as best practices and expertise from which to draw. The lessons we’ve learned working toward our own sustainability goals can also be leveraged to help our partners and end users reach their targets.
We help our end users integrate sustainable practices into their products and operations to meet their internal goals, consumer demand, and government regulations in a variety of ways, such as:
• Reducing a product’s carbon footprint.
• Redesigning a product to be recyclable, reusable, or refurbishable.
• Integrating sustainable materials into product design.
• Creating more sustainable logistics operations.
• Ensuring a socially and environmentally responsible supply chain.
Mendez: Across technology and manufacturing operations, we’re seeing interest in actionable processes that increase efficiency and reduce waste in ways having real impact on suppliers and end costumers across supply chains. We regularly respond to customer and supplier questionnaires covering various ESG topics including carbon reduction initiatives, ethics and compliance, product compliance and responsible sourcing, and human rights and labor laws. We strive to improve our data collection and transparency procedures to meet the needs of our end users while managing resources to comply with the ever-changing regulatory environment. Along these lines, we maintain a yearly sustainability report in accordance with global reporting initiative (GRI) standards and SASB standards so end users and stakeholders can access information related to key sustainability metrics.
Share the first two installments of this series:
Part 1: The increased viability of sustainability
Part 2: The increased viability of sustainability
Design World | designworldonline.com/trends
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Filed Under: Green engineering • renewable energy • sustainability, Trends
