Circularity was one of the main topics up for discussion at the Race Against Climate Change event that took place in Tokyo.
As hundreds of guests gathered at The Miraikan, Japan’s National Museum for Emerging Science, for the summit in March, senior figures from Teijin, PwC and Fujitsu took to the stage for a wide-ranging panel discussion about the challenges and opportunities facing businesses as circularity, and the recycling and re-use of materials, becomes an important element of a sustainable future.
“Through circularity you can solve problems of waste, or resource depreciation,” said Yuki Isogai, Lead Partner at PwC * , Japan Sustainability Center of Excellence, who opened the panel discussion.
“De-carbonisation is a key topic right now, so circularity can also help to battle climate change. Circularity in the value chain can also have major benefits on a biodiversity and human right issue.
“People in business may wonder how we make money out of circularity, or who bears the cost of implementing circularity. Those are important challenges to be solved. But there can be many reasons why recovering used materials, such as resource scarcity, can ensure economic rationality.”
Akimoto Uchikawa, President and CEO of Teijin, revealed what his company is doing to ensure the cutting-edge materials it produces come with the least possible waste or emissions.
“Our customers use our advanced materials because they are durable and resistant to most things – heat, solvent – and thus this means they can be difficult to be recycled,” Uchikawa acknowledged.
“Our lightweight and durable materials, especially in cars and aircraft, can reduce emissions by improving fuel efficiency, but we want to bring that to our production processes too.
“Taking Twaron®, aramid fiber as an example, ahead of our competitors, what we are doing is using 100% renewable electricity in our manufacturing process, while we are collecting the used products and recycling them into a new round of production.
“We have already cut our emissions significantly since 2008 and are aiming to reach net-zero by 2050.”
Infrastructure and IT solutions can also help streamline that process and make it more efficient. That is where Fujitsu come in, as they have been working with Teijin and other companies to provide infrastructure solutions that means the process around recovering materials from products can be monitored from start to finish.
“We have been working on a platform to create circularity value of materials; where it was used, where it was recovered. That kind of data is managed on the platform,” explained Shunsuke Onishi, Corporate Executive Officer COO, CRO of Fujitsu.
“That connection chain is something that we are working on. It is not just about strategy, it is also about having technology that supports those connections.”
All panelists agreed that delivering circularity requires commitment and expertise from all parts of the supply chain, from justifying the business case to developing technologies to recover materials through to building the infrastructure to monitor the journey from recycling to re-use.
“Circularity is going to be a major effort going forward; a single entity cannot solve this,” as Onishi added. “So how can we support it with technology?”
“We need to collaborate upstream and downstream,” Uchikawa said. “The whole supply chain needs to be involved in the ecosystem. We need to share responsibility; if things like carbon credits for operators are shared with the producers who provide more efficient materials, for example, then that incentivises everyone to incorporate circularity.
“I think it’s important we have that kind of eco-system.”
*Her professional affiliation and title were those at the time of her appearance at RACC Tokyo.
