Carbon reduction engineering through value chains intersection, product and process re-design, industrial processes’ scraps de-manufacturing

Composite materials use recently increased, although treatments at their End of Life are inexistent or highly inefficient (from the environmental perspective). Thus, openness to cooperation is needed, supported by methodologies for design for de-manufacturing. The approach proposed in the present work aims at transforming industrial processes’ scraps and off-specification pieces in primary materials, through re-design, without the risk of cannibalisation. It is mainly intended for industrial processes of composite materials; its objective is to find alternative applications to their invaluable final disposal and supports the merging of existing supply chains (Industrial Symbiosis). Nevertheless, it can be easily extended to non-composite and/or non-scraps. Re-design enables the establishment of waste-to-treasure composite scraps’ life cycles and is evaluated through Life Cycle Assessment. The application of the approach involved four Italian companies and results reveal that industrial symbiosis can reduce emissions (from −45% to more than −90%). Guidelines were outlined: involve End of Life operators to know how waste treatments, share information, favour networking and proximity, apply design for disassembly principles, consider simple shapes and modularity during (re)design. Future works will focus on off-the-shelf components and the economic evaluation of the proposed de-manufacturing actions and supply strategies.Left: scraps linear lifecycle. Right: product linear lifecycle.Centre, top: representations of products/processes re-designed in the case study. Centre, bottom: main savings (kgCO2eq).