WasteMap® for Waste Producers
All companies and organisations generate waste through their operations or via their products and packaging
The pressure to demonstrate a duty of care for this material and take responsibility for what happens to it, is growing globally.
This is driven by a mix of regulation, cost pressures and a desire to reduce environmental impact and extract value from the material.
Knowing what happens to this material is the first step to achieving better commercial and environmental outcomes.
Suppliers of waste and recycling services will each have their own data collection and reporting systems.
Managing and qualifying this data can be time consuming and may not answer key questions about the types and amounts of material and what happened to it.
The profile of waste and by-products from a manufacturer, retailer, office, natural resources, infrastructure or construction business will be vary enormously – from inert recyclables to more specialist and perhaps hazardous material.
Common to all, is the need to move the material for processing, transformation or disposal.
These steps generate environmental and carbon impacts that may not be captured and quality checked in current systems.
WasteMap®
We help waste producers to
Satisfy duty of care and producer responsibility requirements
Expose commercial,
industrial and postconsumer
waste flows
Take control and unlock value of waste streams
Quantify ‘waste miles’ and transport impacts
Generate environmental and sustainability reports
Manage contractor performance
WasteMap® in action
Customers
Coca-Cola European Partners, DS Smith and BrewDog
Context
Topolytics initiated Scotland’s Waste and Resources Map, a live view of waste materials moving into, through and out of Scotland. This brought in data from companies, large and small, local authorities and other organisations.
To enrich the ‘map’, Topolytics co-created the COP26 waste insights project with global software company, SAP.
Working with three SAP customers, we set out to ingest, process and analyse data on products, materials, production and process wastes. We calculated the types and amounts of materials, their current pathway through the ‘downstream’ materials supply chain, generating insights that could improve materials recovery and reduce the associated environmental impact.
Consequences
All participants highlighted
- the speed to insight,
- the relatively low effort and
- the potential for scalability.
DS Smith noted that maintaining a circular economy is vital to sustainable growth across all the markets in which it operates. “This means that we need to carefully consider the journey our materials take, understand how customers and consumers use our packaging, and collaborate across supply chains to plug any leakage of materials in landfill or incineration,” explained Mathew Prosser, DS Smith’s European commercial director. “This waste insights project is one of the first real collaborations of its kind, and we are extremely pleased to have been involved since its inception.”
Mike Barry, Director Mikebarryeco Limited and advisor to the Waste Insights Project commented “It’s imperative that we build a circular economy for the trillions of items we consume globally each year. This will not happen by chance. We need deep insight into where and how resources can be recovered across literally millions of touchpoints in homes, high streets, cafes, factories and warehouses. This exciting SAP initiated project will help policy makers, innovators, corporations, designers, the resource sector and investors make a circular future a scale reality.”
Clicks
- https://news.sap.com/uk/2020/09/sap-and-topolytics-launch-cop26-waste-insights-project/
- http://connectedtechnologysolutions.co.uk/sector-report-food-and-beverage-a-circular-ambition-for-post-consumer-waste/
- https://www.scotsman.com/business/edinburgh-firm-heart-tech-project-reduce-nine-billion-tonnes-global-waste-2990582