Sorry, but talking to other people appears to be unavoidable. The days of mechanical, electrical and controls engineering tossing jobs over cubicle walls to each other—and everyone avoiding IT—are long gone, especially because huge challenges like sustainability demand far more speed and flexibility.
For instance, several experts at the Digital Manufacturing and Cybersecurity Institute’s “Win-win of sustainability” workshop on Aug. 13 in Chicago showed how their companies are reorganizing for profitable sustainability, but added that soft skills, cooperation and patience are essential because sustainability covers so many areas that even the largest can’t go it alone.
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“We’re seeking to reduce the impact of our operations, and scaling up solutions across industries, but we need partners to share synergies and benefits,” said Reick Hansjörg, senior global business developer at Procter & Gamble. “For example, developing a circular economy for plastics includes redesigning recycling processes, accessing collection, enabling consumers, sorting materials, and innovating with circular recycling—and each step involves multiple companies.”
Hansjörg reported that P&G’s Sustainability Solutions approach includes developing foundational sustainability insights, R&D and intellectual property; deciding which goals need partners and recruiting them; and building techno-economic and business models. Once it finds suitable partners, P&G opts mostly for joint-development licensing partnerships and some option co-investment arrangements. This lets it scale up, commercialize globally, jointly create value, and share profits fairly.
“We’re commercializing a 100% polymeric, recyclable aerosol bottle with Plastipak that has a reduced environmental footprint,” explained Hansjörg. “It’s made using label-less, laser marking that can process more than 300 containers per minute, and Imflux’s constant pressure- and sensor-controlled, injection molding, which produces lighter parts, uses post-consumer resins (PCR), and saves up to 15% on energy.”
David Koenigs, senior R&D leader for packaging and specialty plastics at Dow, added at the MxD event that his company plans to transform 300 million metric tons of plastic waste per year by 2030, so it can join the circular plastics economy, and use renewable energy for its mechanical, chemical and bio-based recycling processes.
“Getting back to virgin polymer performance is the goal, but traditional gasification and pyrolysis need lots of energy, so we’ve been working with P&G on a proprietary process that combines depolymerization, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) dissolution and mechanical means to turn dirty, stinky plastic waste into white, virgin-like polyethelyene,” said Koenigs. “We’re working on this now, but we can’t scale up yet, and we’re still dealing with feedstock challenges.
“This is why partnerships are so important for big tasks like sustainability. To succeed, they must have trust, transparency, and early alignment of expectations, which can also be adjusted later. This puts everyone in one boat with complementary expertise and beneficial overlaps, and the agility to learn and adapt.”
Darrell Boverhof, environment, health, safety and sustainability (EHS&S) director at Dow, added that once individuals and organizations learn their sustainability impacts, they must prioritize their carbon-reduction strategies and keep them aligned. “Sustainability is like herding cats, which is another reason why it requires the right governance and cooperation by all players,” said Boverhof. “For example, I don’t usually collaborate with my finance colleagues, but now that we need numbers about impacts and data to support sustainability efforts, they’re my best friends.”
