NEW REVENUE STREAMS
Adding to the bottom line
In the first of an occasional series, Ainsley Fraser investigates potential additional Lines of Business (LOBs) which could create new revenue streams for companies in the waste industry.
Most of us in this industry spend a lot of time running! It’s seldom the lycra-clad rural lanes jogging stuff … but more usually bouncing between the yard, the office, the car, various sites and customers, all of which is achieved whilst clutching the mobile, fielding enquiries or troubleshooting problems. That’s called everyday life – and it’s what we do to keep our existing businesses running. Now pause, take a deep breath and
ponder the time we should all try to spend looking at ways to make our businesses
‘better’. To some, that will mean more profit … to others, its new vehicles … but it could be thinking about additional or alternative activities – Lines of Business (LoBs), into which we could diversify or bolt onto our existing businesses. This article – and any others like it which
SHM agrees to run – will not seek to wave any magic wands, come up with a plan or offer commercial advice … but they will try
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to look at bits of the business which you might not be involved in already, but that if you were, might generate some useful revenue.
When I saw the headline ‘Recycling
e-waste worth up to €3.7 billion to Europe’, my immediate thought was that surely, we could bring some of that work further down the supply chain. Sorting, processing and recovering more or at least some of the material closer to source could be a viable opportunity – all of course covered under the WEEE (Waste from Electric and Electronic Equipments) framework. Then I linked up with Lenny Koh … actually
Professor SC Lenny Koh, BEng, PhD, FRSA, an Associate Dean at Sheffield University and Director of the Advanced Resource Efficiency Centre (AREC) – and a world leading authority on low carbon supply chains. Professor Koh told me that she and her
colleagues and co-authors, Federica Cucciella, Idiano D’Adomo and Paolo Rosa from the University of L’Aquila and Politecnico di Milano, have been working on the collaborative research for several years,
SHM December 2015/January 2016 Issue 121
building from their prior research on turning waste into resource, resource efficiency and the circular economy. Their work has just been recognised with the Elsevier Atlas Award – and SHM readers have been granted permission to share it (see panel). Their award-winning paper, entitled
‘Recycling of WEEEs: An economic assessment of present and future e-waste streams’ argues that recycling waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) more effectively could be worth up to €3.7 billion to the European market as well as reducing environmental pollution. “Our paper is a cornerstone and crucial
evidence base to really inform society globally and encourage us to think about the amount of embedded value and precious materials in the electronic products that we consume on a daily basis,” says Professor Koh. “In particular, this research has strong relevance to addressing global issues of materials availability and security, reducing reliance on unused non-renewable materials, especially precious, critical and rare earth materials in manufacturing for sustainability and for consideration for substitution.”
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