Circular Economy 101 – Examples
Today we’re talking about circular economies, but examples speak with more volume than theory.
I’m Jon Mullen the Energy Evangelist and we’re talking about #SaveEnergySaveMoney.
There are lots of diverse examples and many people will be able to add to many more than these examples. But I just want to start the discussion.
Example 1 – I was speaking with a food manufacturer about their energy usage, and in the middle of the conversation they mention they are disposing of hot water down the drain at 40 degrees centigrade. So what I asked them to do was if they could run that hot water through a heat recovery system to extract the energy from the water and store it in a heat battery. Then because the heat battery is able to store heat at the same or very similar temperature for a number of days or even weeks they could pump that energy back into their food manufacturing at a later stage. This would have saved thousands of pounds every year.
Example 2 – A number of years ago I was working with a motorway maintenance supplier. They were paid by the motorway maintenance teams to dispose of refuse. This meant they would receive many dump trucks to their site, and then they could feed the stone & aggregate mixture through a big machine which sifted the mixture based on size and density. What was once refuse had now been sorted and separated. The sorted material could now be sold back out to the motorway maintenance teams.
Example 3 – Another area which has been developed over many years is food waste. This can take many forms such as using edible food which cannot be sold to provide for the homeless or local struggling communities. Or using separate food waste which can be collected together as fuel for a bio-digester. This could be food waste collected from city centre food businesses or distilleries. And the bio-digester will allow this food slurry to ferment and generate gas such as methane which can be resold, and also generate heat which can be used for other processes.
So that is just 3 simple examples, but in every business there are items which were once binned, but now we have a choice to recycle and reuse. So why should we pay to get rid of rubbish if we can make money out of the same items.
So when do you want to start? Let’s start with a coffee and a chat.
If you want to talk more, email me at EnergyEvangelist@EnergyPriceSaver.com .