Inspiring sustainable practices in manufacturing

One of the ways forward in encouraging manufacturers to engage in sustainable and environmentally-friendly practices could be the issuance of ‘collective green bonds’, according to Chairman and CEO of Carbon Partners Asiatica, Mr. Junji Hatano, speaking at the Macao International Environmental Co-operation Forum & Exhibition, which commenced yesterday.
“Green bonds are relatively straightforward – they are issued with explicit commitment that the funds raised by the green bonds – the proceeds – will be used for green activities,” points out Hatano, noting that there are two sides to the bonds issuance, given the scale of the companies involved.
“The reason I said green ‘collective’ is that green bonds normally are issued by large multinational banks – like World Bank, Asia Development Bank – and the minimum usually is 100 million – now of course you can’t issue 100 million (green) bonds,” notes Hatano, stating that it “makes it too large for many of the companies”, given that the start-up innovative companies are largely the ones driving the growth in the area.
The solution: ‘collective green bonds’.
“Instead of one company issuing a green bond of 1 million and using it for say solar panel installation,” points out Hatano, “if 100 companies get together and issue a green bond of 10 million,” then collective green bonds issued by small companies will get global attention”. One of the main selling points for this is the worldwide attention it will garner, notes the CEO.
“It will make it easier for your customer to explain to their customer how they are about selecting good suppliers,” notes Hatano – pointing out that even a newspaper clipping can help, given that “the green bonds will have the rarity value and attract attention and raise your companies’ image”.

More than money
Aside from methods for companies raising money to implement green practices, taking advantage of technology to drive innovation, and staying agile are key, points out Billy Wu, Lecturer of Dyson School of Design Engineering at the Imperial College in London.
“You need agility when you manufacture, traditional manufacturing is quite rigid – each time you change it, it costs money,” pointes out Wu.
“We need technologies which allow you to iterate quickly in the design process to help this be successful in large companies. The world is changing, and very quickly, if we’re not agile in responding we’ll fail,” points out Wu, noting that there’s a “valley of death” between start-ups and mass production of prototypes.
“There are many start-ups that are emerging with fantastic ideas – they can manufacture one prototype – but the barrier to success is that they have to mass produce these items – there’s a ‘valley of death’ which we call batch production,” notes Wu. “We need manufacturing techniques that will move with us – digital that will tell us what to do and manufacturing that will [be flexible enough to adapt],” notes Wu.
“We’ve gone through the stage of driving costs down […] As we develop as a society we demand higher and higher performance items and we are quite wasteful as a people. Looking from sustainability perspective, this can’t continue,” he notes, pointing out that technology such as 3D printing is transforming the industry.
“Warehouses which were traditionally full can shrink that down – this has an economic impact:
your raw material should be sourced from local producers,” he points out noting the added gain of reducing transportation fees and fossil fuel use.
The road leads to what Wu calls “Industry 4.0”.
This is “being smarter about what we do – how we manage inputs and outputs,” explains Wu, stating: “there’s a myth that manufacturing requires space and lots of people – traditionally it did, but with digital manufacturing – we’re not just taking a piece of metal and hitting it – we’re doing smart things with it”.
This can be in any sector from steel production to agriculture, points out Vasco Pimenta, founder and CEO of aerospace company Spin.works.
The group is currently applying “satellite and drone footage [to agriculture], and transforming this data into actual information for people who are producing food,” points out the founder, noting that “this has tremendous implications in terms of being able to improve the ability to manage water to produce food […] the emissions that you can avoid by managing inputs better” and providing localized information for producers, cutting costs, increasing yields, and adding value.
MIECF continues until April 1.