The Circular Journey

3 conversations Needed for Asset Management in a Sustainable World

Things degrade and deteriorate over time. The world takes its toll through use and natural degradation on assets: handles break, roofs weather, metal rusts.

Human assets also change over time. Employees mature and move onto different roles and responsibilities. Employees can move out altogether and new ones come in depending on the fortunes of the organisation and desires of the employees.

Conversations with Sustainability at their Heart

With focus on physical assets in particular, here are three conversations that can help guide professionals in working toward a more sustainable world. At the heart of these conversations is the goal of creating a circular journey for assets instead of simply a one-way disposable journey.

1. Look around for suppliers that have production by-products that you can use as inputs

2. Maximize the use of assets in your control for optimal benefit

3. Visualise an “end of product life” plan for when the asset is no longer providing a return

Today I want to touch briefly on the first two by suggesting some past articles from Green Corridor for your further study. For visualizing a products next life or “end of product life”, I will be focussing on packaging.

#1 Your Input Channel

In November 2022 my story To Realize the Circular Economy Dream – Reach Out to Your Community, I used the example of a company that takes bread crusts (a by-product of one industry) and uses it for making beer.

Here is an example where one company’s waste becomes another company’s raw material. It seems like a simple enough concept, but it is very hard to match up the know-how to a possible local supplier when you are doing this for the first time. The advice in November is the same today – talk to the business community outside of your own industry. It can help to create novel reuse ideas and produce a win-win outcome for both parties.

#2 Maximize the Use of Your Own Assets

A very visible example of this is the carbon neutral or near zero facilities emerging in some our cities today. The Red Lion 2 facility of DB Schenker Singapore demonstrates how with current technology a facility for storage and work can also be a power generation facility. Refitting and energy saving solutions abound these days, with some governments and banks providing green loans or straight out subsidies.

In the article My Visit to Energy Observer – A Tour into the Future of Ocean Travel, I wrote how using the sun, the wind and the ocean’s own water was being used to send one research vessel around the world emissions free. Fully using the location and space that the Energy Observer itself took up on the ocean. The energy generating and saving equipment alone was able to propel the ship over the ocean in many different conditions. The technology used holds many insights for the maritime industry.

#3 End of Life Planning

Every physical asset should ideally have a sustainable next life journey. Look at packaging, office furniture, food waste from a conference, paper and promotional product waste from an advertising campaign. What happens after these items are used? What is the optimal next step after its use?

Organisations using packages as a one time disposable resource clearly have no plan for what happens at the end of the packages life. It is a situation where organisations profit (by the sale of goods) and consumers pay vis-a-vis waste management costs, environmental degradation costs and healthcare costs.

Packaging for consumer products is the most customer-facing marketing tool that we have. It is what displays the brands name and the values that the brand supports. The “recyclable” triangle is looked at more and more sceptically in markets around the world. Singapore for instance only really recycled 6% of the plastic collected in 2022. There are still too many challenges in terms of cleaning and sorting to make recycling truly reach its circular ambition.

Large consumer brands are struggling to put in place plans that truly do not pass the costs of clean-up and environmental degradation to its consumers. Some planning for packing materials’ “end of life” are starting to emerge. Some companies have simply moved away from plastics and instead opted to use biodegradable packaging or they are running their own recycling programs by providing incentives to customers to return their packaging for more focused reuse.

Assets Matter

It can often be said that we live a disposable life, but it is important to acknowledge that nothing really disappears in this world. It only takes on different forms. Assets take up space, they can take up energy and they can even promote your values.

So start the conversations where needed. Have discussions about inputs, maximizing current use, and finally how to best plan a sustainable end of life. When it comes to assets, it’s a conversation that is worth having.

Food for Thought

Origin transparency and revolutionary substitution for supply chains in a fragmented yet increasingly digital world

In our LogiSYM Magazine, there are many articles and adverts which help to provide transparency on the flow of goods from supplier and to the final customer. These technologies help to increase efficiency and ensure that customer expectations of quality and service are met.

Vendor certification is no doubt a step that is done for most organisations when they are building their supply chain, but how intense and how rigorous that certification process is has its limits. Government regulation and enforcement of the regulations nationally are heavily relied upon and in a globalised economy the differences between each government’s regulation and enforcement standard can be well? – quite large.

Supply chain tracking systems cannot generally see into the vendors operations of resource extraction and this is a challenge of our generation. The process of extracting mineral wealth such as gold, diamonds or oil for instance has been well documented to cause environmental harm as well as societal harm in some countries. The term “Blood diamonds” was even created to highlight the harm that diamond mining was having in some West African countries. But these raw materials are only some of the most written about. A more concerning supply chain for our own health and the planet’s health is the very food that we put in our mouths.

What’s for Dinner?

In a recent scientific report published in Natureportfolio, researchers in Australia showed that just over one in ten fish packages sold to customers in Australia are likely displaying the wrong fish species. They did this by looking at the label on the package and then running random DNA tests on the meat inside.

The incidence of mislabelling was more frequent when fish groups containing protected species were tested. When sharks and rays (which contains many species that are supposed to be protected due to the fact that they are endangered) packages were tested – it showed that mislabelling occurred over 35% of the time. That is one in three chances! For Snapper (which also has several critically endangered species) the mislabelling was one in four!

Initiatives for more Sustainable Sourcing

Industries have variations on this, but to limit the problems associated with poor transparency of quality, legality or sustainability; supply chain managers use some of the following methods:

• Physically go to the source and investigate.

• Find an additional certification body (that does the investigating for you) for quality and sourcing that are connected with your supplier’s goods.

• Test the supplier’s methods. Do their methods and documented standards meet your organisation’s values or does more need to be done?

• Test in-house when you receive their goods, or use an independent surveyor to test and certify quality independently?

• Substitute product from a more legit supply chain that can replace product from a known corrupted supply chain.

New Technologies Helping to Get Fish on the Table

To illustrate this last method – let’s circle back to fish! A revolutionary solution is more pressing than ever for the world’s oceans and future human generations. Our oceans are at present simply overfished – but our growing population is only demanding more and more fish protein. This problem is especially acute in Southeast Asia.

Technology is try to get to the table though, by leaving the ocean completely alone. This year marks the 10th annaversary of the first cultured meat hamburger introduced in London. In the years since 2013, the cultured meats industry has made very large technological advances, to the extent that we are no longer talking about a thousand time disparity in price. Price parity in some verticals may be coming soon. Scaling up is the main obstacle at present, but with governments as large as China getting involved, that obstacle may soon be overcome.

During a recent SGInnovate event, I sat in an audience intent on learning the latest from Mihir Pershad, Founder of Umani Bioworks He is working hard to save the most threatened species of fish currently being driven to extinction at global fish markets by growing the finest tuna - not in the ocean, but in a lab! The process provides much more healthier and commercially standardised outputs because the environment is controlled. The plastics and heavy metals often associated with fish caught in the wild is simply not introduced in a lab environment.

In this case substitution of the wild fish market with a revolutionary alternative can actually cut many costs as well as provide extra value to consumers. The ever more expensive fishing expeditions, fish processing costs, waste disposal costs, and murky transparency – are all eliminated. At the same time, a higher quality fish meat product with huge environmental savings can possibly increase revenues.

Brave Changes

It is not easy to move organisations into truly more sustainable channels of supply. Old ways and price pressures can always be a block to moving into revolutionary solutions (illustrated by cultured meats for instance). I feel that it is fun and interesting to keep looking for new angles and revolutionary solutions. In that spirit, I implore all logistics professionals to keep “fishing” for new ideas and solutions!

Cures from the Sky!

Healthcare Distribution is Driving Itself Into a More Environmentally Friendly Direction

Healthcare and saving the environment do not at first seem a natural fit. Disposable masks and tons of one-use equipment is associated with much of the medical experience we all have received. This tends to demonstrate that the industry is hopelessly linked with a tremendous amount of waste and therefore linked to emissions which damage our planet.

While materials science struggles to provide more environmentally friendly disposable materials, improving the logistics for health services delivery is also something vital for our planet.

Blood Bank in the Sky

A little over a month ago I attended an SGInnovate event which highlighted the advances being made in the drone delivery space. On the panel was a company named Zipline, which is based in Silicon Valley. Amazingly their blood delivery drone operation in Rwanda distributes 70% of that nation’s blood. Terence Yeo, Head of New Markets, told me that this is not simply adhoc delivery runs either, but routine distribution.

All of this is being done with emissions free electric UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). The advantage for delivery using this method are many. There is the ability to centralise the storage of blood for maximum efficiency. Because of the flying capability’s, there is no traffic or route issues. Additionally the superior speed vs. ground transportation is unquestioned. Zipline’s fixed wing UAV delivery systems in Rwanda are moving at 100 kilometers per hour with no stop lights. It’s not all about blood either. UAVs or “drones”, well known in the military world are slowly but surely making life better in the civilian world when speed and security are highly prized.

In addition to blood distribution, Zipline also operates drones In Ghana where they were able to get vaccines out, countrywide to fight COVID 19. The project started in 2019 and by March of 2022, these electric fixed wing drones had delivered over 1 million vaccines in addition to other healthcare related deliveries.

Early Adopters Making Gains

A Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation survey which looked at effects of drone delivery on healthcare showed that Ghana was able to decrease stockouts of vaccines in general by 60%. They reduced the number of health service closings caused by no supplies by 21% while increasing the variety of other medicines on hand for use by health practitioners 10%. As a result Zipline’s business and reach in Africa is expanding.

Ironically, it is developing nations that are at the forefront of efficient and sustainable healthcare UAV delivery. When talking to Terence and other leaders in drone delivery – this seems to be due to the fact that governments in developing countries are more dynamic when it comes to opening up airspace for commercial UAV services. If air traffic control standards were adjusted to accommodate for live shipment data and actual routes being generated, then perhaps there could be more metropolitan areas allowing safe delivery services.

Drone delivery is very much encouraged and allowed in advanced metropolitan areas when there are appropriate user cases. Singapore for example has allowed for delivery to ships in its waters. Skyports’ Sanjay Suresh told me how he operates delivery operations that improves not only the speed of delivery, but also safety. While delivering medicines, food and spare parts, Skyports electric drones by design also eliminate all of the carbon emissions and much of the danger in ship to ship cargo transfers.

We can hopefully expect more and more growth in this sector. A major challenge though is actually finding enough UAV pilots. Additionally, regulations created for airplanes and helicopters are still often creating barriers to advancing investment and innovation in drone delivery services.

Initiatives for more Sustainable Health Care Delivery

This list can be a long one, but I want to boil this down for a regular distributor of health care products:

· Reduce long-haul jet flights as much as possible

· Incentivise carbon-neutral warehousing practices for your stored goods

· Incentivise carbon free delivery (be it by EV, UAV or EV land transport)

· Continue to press for biodegradable materials for product packaging where possible.

Healthcare distribution is an area where saving lives is the primary purpose. For this reason, it is likely that governments will be allowing use of UAVs in this sector before others. So, when I am interested to learn about the latest advances for UAV delivery, I’ll be keeping an eye on the healthcare sector - as well as an eye on the sky.