Sparking the circular economy in Melbourne's manufacturing industry
Victoria is the home of a number of leading Circular Economy (CE) businesses. While the number is small, these businesses are great models of what can be achieved, and their experiences provide both insights and guidance for other businesses about to start the CE journey.
Monash University, in partnership with the South East Melbourne Manufacturers Alliance, and funded by Sustainability Victoria, is supporting CE adoption in four of South East Melbourne's manufacturing sub-sectors: plastics, textiles, general engineering, and food.
Through the project, we aimed to:
- Establish the extent of relevant CE practices (waste prevention, reuse, remanufacture, and upcycling) being implemented by businesses and their tier-one suppliers across four manufacturing sub-sectors in South East Melbourne and how effective they are in delivering CE outcomes.
- Identify and develop practical approaches for manufacturing businesses to adopt CE strategies and practices, where their implementation will lead to a reduction of waste by up to 20% in their operations and tier-one suppliers.
- Identify potential barriers and challenges to adopting these new approaches and identify how these can be overcome through education, training, mentoring, and other support services for businesses and their tier-one suppliers.
Through various project activities, we identified and developed practical approaches for manufacturing businesses to adopt CE strategies and practices, which will also overcome probable barriers and challenges. Our online seminars were conducted to help manufacturers identify CE opportunities, and four subsequent in-person workshops helped manufacturers develop strategies and implement actionable practices for CE adoption.
These findings informed the project's subsequent phases in developing seminars and workshops to promote awareness and capability to adopt CE strategies in manufacturing businesses in Southeast Melbourne through seminars and workshops.
Outcomes
- Anticipated reduction in waste (post-workship) was on average 30% per business
- Developed the Circular Economy Journey website
- Engaged with 288 industry and local government representatives
- 25 interviews with leading CE businesses and officials of local governments
- Public seminars
- 3 co-designed workshops