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How to Reduce Material Waste

Staff Writer
8/16/2019 | 5 min read
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How to Reduce Material Waste

Reducing material waste means greater resource efficiency, less pollution, and more profits. Each dollar saved on raw materials costs goes straight to the bottom line.

Before you can eliminate raw material waste, you need to be able to identify it. To do this, every aspect of the production process should be addressed and tracked.

"The lifecycle flow of materials (e.g., end-use material efficiency improvement and cascading through reuse, recycling, and recovery) and their storage in the economy (stockpiling) are not well understood, and as a consequence, important options for efficiency improvements might be overlooked as attention is focused instead on energy efficiency in materials production,” says the Materials Research Society.

"Issues such as raw material use, waste production, energy consumption, and emissions to the atmosphere should be considered at each stage of the product lifecycle,” recommends the UK’s BusinessLink.gov, which offers practical advice for businesses.

To save the most money, businesses must take a strategic approach to minimizing materials waste. Consider focusing on at least these areas:

Inventory

Many companies over-order the materials required to fulfill production, especially in the make-to-order environment, says Envirowise

The true cost of excess inventory levels should be analyzed carefully before a business orders excess raw materials. Just-in-time inventory and lean manufacturing can eliminate such unnecessary costs by matching production to demand in real-time to eliminate the need for excessive inventory, warehouse and equipment space, etc.

"Check how you handle and store raw materials,” notes BusinessLink. "Even failing to empty all bags and containers properly could lead to significant amounts of waste.”

Reuse/Reprocess

"Reusing items is another way to stop waste at the source because it delays or avoids that item’s entry in the waste collection and disposal system,” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends.

Envirowise offers this basic "wastebusting” example for the factory:

In most paint and chemical plants there is a plentiful supply of empty raw material drums to use for waste containers. But even in plants where this possibility for re-use is recognized you may still see new drums used for waste, usually for want of a system of supplying empty raw material drums to the areas that need them — the waste-generating departments.

"Look carefully at the waste you’re disposing of,” BusinessLink suggests. Could any of it be put back into the production process or reused for another purpose? Reuse turns materials that would otherwise become waste into valuable resources. Already, today’s products are being increasingly manufactured with total- or partial-recycled content, such as recovered plastic in carpeting and park benches.

Product Design

"Formulate for disposal or recycling,” Envirowise advises. "Avoiding the problem of obsolescence should start at the earliest possible stage — when formulating new products.”

"In tracking waste, you should understand how many good parts you’re getting to how many bad parts,” says private-equity firm Gaebler Ventures. "This could be applied to raw materials or finished products. If you’re constructing metal chairs and you have a good deal of scrapped steel, you should be aware of what percentage of your order is being utilized.”

Where possible, use materials that have already been recycled or can be reused, recycled, or recovered.

One example of an area for improvement is packaging materials, which create a great deal of waste. "When businesses manufacture their products with less packaging, they are buying less raw material,” notes the EPA. "A decrease in manufacturing costs can mean a larger profit margin, with savings that can be passed on to the consumer.”

Raw Material Cost Savings

"The bottom line is that pricing pressures for raw materials and commodities will likely continue to be an obstacle to success for many North American manufacturers,” Louise O’Sullivan, president and founder of Prime Advantage, said in a statement.

For manufacturers, using raw materials more efficiently can bring significant cost savings.

To prevent the waste of materials, continually assess systems and revise procedures and policies. Increasing the efficiency of industrial processes and the flow of materials through the economy is a slow transformation process that will take time.

"At all times, in all processes, waste can be reduced,” says Envirowise. "Where the payback seems poor, consider again whether all the costs have been taken into account and bear in mind that disposal costs, material costs and external pressures for improvement will continue to increase.”

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