Waste is a Design Flaw: Turning Waste Into Value

Episode summary 

What if waste wasn’t the end of a product’s life, but the beginning of a new resource? In this episode of the Optimistic Outlook hosted by Eryn Devola, Global Head of Sustainability for Siemens Digital Industries, Paul Coyne of Envetec shares how technology can help transform complex waste streams into valuable resources, starting with single-use plastics in life sciences and healthcare. Coyne explains how Envetec’s chemical-based technology can treat contaminated laboratory waste without destroying the plastics, creating opportunities for recovery and reuse while potentially reducing carbon emissions associated with traditional, energy-intensive disposal methods. 

Turning waste into a resource takes more than technology. It requires collaboration across the value chain, support from leaders and frontline employees, and a clear business case that balances sustainability benefits, usability and economics. Coyne also discusses the importance of designing products with their end-of-life in mind and using data to measure progress. His optimistic outlook? Growing corporate commitment to sustainability, investment in recycling innovation and a new generation of workers who expect more circular solutions are helping move the circular economy from aspiration to practical reality. 

Full Transcript 

Lauren Espin 
Hi, I'm Lauren Espin, and this is the Optimistic Outlook podcast. Thanks for listening. We hear a lot about the circular economy. The idea that we can reduce waste by keeping materials and resources in use for longer. It's a big idea, but what does it actually look like in practice? How can a company take something at once treated as waste and turn it into something useful or even valuable? 

So today we wanted to get specific. Not the circular economy as a concept, but one company, one waste stream, and the actual arithmetic of handling it differently, what it costs before, what it costs now, and maybe most usefully, who inside a large organization has to say yes before any of it can happen. Take a listen. As Eryn Devola, Global Head of Sustainability for Siemens Digital Industries, has a conversation with Paul Coyne, CCO of and a company built around turning a difficult waste stream into something a facility can actually use. 

Eryn Devola 
Paul, thank you so much for being here. Let's just get right into it. 

What was the thing that you saw at a facility that really made you think about this way, stream, and what really got you started in this area?  

00:01:25 — From waste stream to resource

Paul Coyne 
First of all, thanks very much for for having me. I guess, you know, when you when we look at it and when we look at waste streams, I guess, you know, in the context of the history of waste, it was something that we just always considered as part of the process, you know, so, you know, Envetec or our company exists in an area of life science and healthcare and in those areas and in that industry, the waste stream, you know, obviously it had to perform a process and a function. It was very, very little, you know, thought process went into what happened that once he used and you discarded the product, okay. So you would extract, you would distribute. You would mold, you would use and in absolutely discard. So all the tall process went into waste. How do we use it? How does it perform is a sensitive. Is it specific. Does a performance function. But then when it gets used it's discarded. Then very, little thought process actually happens to what happens in the when it goes into the bin. I guess for us as a company and, as learners in this kind of region or in this, in this business, we, you look at what your customer base is doing. 

You know, you learn what they're asking for. And sometimes the best lessons that you learn is what's happening out in the industry where we solve the, you know, the transition from maybe waste as a, problem into waste as an asset was, you know, we initially looked at customers and they were, you know, taking complicated waste streams, making them simpler. 

That enabled a pathway into more recovery and recyclable and closed loop systems. That was enabled through, I guess, tthrough technology. Some good examples, for example, were in the food industry some way streams, you know, polystyrene waste streams that were, you know, destined for incineration when you decompensated them, put them through a mechanical process, then that allows them, for example, to go back into a polymer based recovery process. 

And that changed our attitude as a company to say, okay, yep, we have some form of enabling technology, but that enabling technology opens up an entire world of polymer recovery. So for me personally, and I guess as a company, that was the, you know, the first time when we looked at this and we said, you know, there is a possibility for resource recovery, especially single use plastics, which are heavily, heavily used in that industry. 

Eryn Devola 
So, I mean, it's really a paradigm shift, right, from seeing this as a waste stream to a resource stream.  

00:03:56 — Single-use plastics and circular systems

Paul Coyne 
Absolutely. So, you know, if you go back in the history of, of this kind of general industry, whether it's life science or healthcare, if you go back into the 60s and 70s, much of the waste and much of the products that were used would have been, you know, typical glassware, for example, you know, would have been washed, would have been sterilized. 

Then over the course of the decades that moved more towards single use plastic, moved towards single use plastic for, you know, for often good reasons, product use, reasons of sterility, usability. But that comes at a cost, right? So you as I said, you extract a very, very valuable asset and a resource. You know, you put a true a a extrusion process, you mold it to distribute it, you use it. 

But often the case the use of that material is used over maybe 1 or 2 days or a number of days, and then it goes into a regulated medical bin or a biohazard has been and it's destined for, for incineration. And I guess that's the bit where, you know, there had to be a paradigm shift that, you know, the world has moved towards the use of this technology, single use technology. 

I don't think it's moving back because, you know, you've got costs of labor. As I said, you've got other product use and product features and product benefit kind of considerations that has to be used very, very heavily regulated industries. So you have to think, okay, waste is inevitable, but what's not inevitable is how we look at that resource and what can happen that resource in the future, if we adopt the right type of of technology and right processes to bring these products and resources back into closed loop systems. 

Eryn Devola 
So you've got this paradigm shift of the of the waste stream as a resource. And then you also have the technology that kind of puts that thing together to make it happen. 

00:05:49 — The waste ecosystem and data

Paul Coyne 
Waste is a ,I guess it's an ecosystem of of companies, right. So there's no such thing really as one part or one chain in that link with the solution. 

Okay. So you've got the the raw materials, you've got the product manufacturers, you've got the user, the company. You have got, you know facilities management. You've got enabling technologies like like ours. You've got, you know, platforms like the Siemens Insight Hubs for your capturing, capturing that that data. You move that forward to an. You know, mechanical recycling, potentially advanced recycling and all the way back to the start. Right?  

So it's not you know, you cannot solve these problems in isolation. So in order for, you know, your little link in the chain to work, you need to understand the full possibility of the future link and the past link in that, in that process. And if you break the link in that process, then it becomes very, very difficult to achieve achieve your goal. 

Eryn Devola 
So maybe can you walk us through how this might have worked with one of the customers or one of the companies that you work with, what the paradigm shift was, how you were able to help them come through? We don't have to talk about names. We're just kind of getting a little bit more specific about maybe one example of where this is really showing a much more circular way, really setting an example. 

00:07:11 — Recycling laboratory waste

Paul Coyne 
Yeah. Look, there are there are complicated examples where the guess they be one very, very simple and straightforward example is in the area of, you know, QC microbiology for example. So QC microbiology is used in pretty much every product that you know you use. So what are is a cosmetic a food beverage in healthcare. You know medicinal microbiology whatever the case may be QC microbiology effectively makes the world safe right. It makes your product safe, your medicine safe. You know, it makes your food safe. It makes cosmetics safe. But in order to do that, it comes at a cost, right? That cost is, you know, we have tons and tons of laboratories around the world. They take a platform. They will test for things like indicator organisms, organisms, pathogens and so on. 

Again, vast quantities of single use plastic. Right. So we go back to the 50s and 60s you had things everyone's heard of a petri dish. Petri dishes were made from plastic or, sorry, made from glass at a time. Then we moved forward. And they're used from or made from plastic, single use plastic, mainly polystyrene. And again for good reason. Right?  

Throughput, ease of use, sterility concentrated on the test, not on the the platform of the test. And you move on and you do that, do the next one. So for example with one company that does that comes to mind, very very kind of large QC microbiology laboratory linear process bought by a, you know, a sterilized petri dish. Bring it into the laboratory, do the QC testing. After that process ends. That product is destined for autoclaving or incineration complete very very carbon intensive process in terms of, you know, the actual carbon input to keep water or heat steam 221 degrees, loads and loads of water. And so, you know, a lot of logistics, but but really what the the downfall of that linear process is that resource is lost. Right? So it cannot be retrieved, cannot be used again, kind of go back into a polymer based economy open loop closely. It's just the possibility ends there. So this company obviously, you know, for whatever the reasons like in order is a corporate goal, whether it's a personal goal or economic goal. Whatever the motivation, they felt this had to stop. So an enabling technology like our technology, Envetec Generations technology, for example, not heat based, chemical based technology still fulfills the function of leaving the way stream safe benign, but does not destroy it and cause the end product to be destroyed in any way. So therefore you can reenter that product into a release economy. So that is one example where we have hundreds of tonnes of waste that is destined for incineration on a linear process that is open to a closely technology. 

You have done some collaborations lot with the manufacturers of these products. The feedstock has been sent back and demonstrated time and time again that it's possible to remold reproduce this product. And that's quite inspiring. It's quite, you know, cool to see that where you see a product that potentially could and would end its life having that possibility to go back as a second, and possibly third and fourth for cycle in a product that's just effectively a single use and reuse product. 

Eryn Devola 
Or at least it used to be a single use and reuse product. 

Paul Coyne  
That's exactly right.  

00:11:08 — Business drivers and stakeholder buy-in

Eryn Devola 
You know, I think about this and you can get someone in the organization that has the inspiration, but where is the decision happening? Is that happening from a sustainability angle, from a business angle, from a procurement angle, what do you see as the drivers for this paradigm shift from seeing this as a waste stream to a resource stream? 

 Paul Coyne 
Yeah, it’s a good question. So, you know, motivation comes from everywhere. You know, it doesn't necessarily come from, you know, I guess from one area in an organization, sometimes the motivation comes from the C-suite level, you know, the very, very distinct and obvious landfill avoidance goals, carbon reduction goals, scope one emission goals need to achieve those goals. So that's driven from the from the top down. 

Often the case it's, you know, sustainability people or managers that are in the organization looking at uswaste streams sometimes you know the obvious way streams or the low hanging fruit maybe like post-industrial waste or things like packaging and paper that has been done already. Okay, so the company now needs to move forward with actually one of the more complex with streams that we need to deal with here. 

That's what we come in. We all just deal with a complex stream is nothing is ever simple, but we deal with a complex waste. The companies that we deal with tend to be, you know, large biopharma, large food and food and beverage company. So that is a complex decision making process with a lot of different stakeholders, you know, from C-suite to back then to middle management. 

But it's also quite enjoyable is that people on the bench, you know, young people that have started their careers, that are working on the bench or working in these laboratories, they have brought the expectation outside of the industry that they adopt every day. They absolutely, the hought of taking a plastic bottle and putting it in a bin is so alien to them that when they come into industry, they said, this is alien to. Right? So we need to do a different have a different way of doing it. So to answer your question, I don't have a good answer for you. Other than every stakeholder in an organization has an input to it. The motivations can be economic. They can be sustainability driven, they can be usability driven. But whatever the motivation, it usually ends in a pretty cool result at the end of it. 

Eryn Devola 
So I think we have heard a little bit about where the motivation comes from, but I'm sure that you hear in your work a lot of the objections. So what are the things that maybe are objections that sound on the surface, that maybe look like resistance? And what's really the problems that you need to overcome along the way? 

00:13:53 — Sustainability, usability and economics

Paul Coyne 
Yeah, it's a it's a fair point. You know, when, when you change a process, when you know, from a legacy method to a new method or to to a new way of doing things, you're often you'll often often read objections. What we as an organization kind of typically understand. If you're going to be commercially successful, you need to have tree legs on the stool. 

Okay. So the first leg is around the sustainability benefit we take very, very highly there. Okay. So we could potentially take 90% of the carbon equivalents out of a process just by doing that. Make sense. Right. You don't burn it, you don't steam it. You treat it and you recover it. So it makes sense. So the sustainability benefit will, you know, be be delivered on can be accessed and can be measured, which is incredibly important. 

The second negative still is usability. Where does the technology go. This was a potentially a bin that was collected yesterday. And a new bin or an empty bin was was put in this place overnight. Right. 

So it’s often case when you talk to someone they don't even know what happens to the to the to the way string. So where does it where does the system live? Where does the technology live. Who runs this. You know, these other facilities management organization is that, you know, onsite people, whatever the case may be. It's a consideration that needs to needs to happen. And the third thing is an economic argument. There's always an economic argument. And if you don't ignore us or if you do ignore it, you know, it's just always there, right?  

You know, it can potentially cost a little bit more or it can cost a little bit less. But if you're ten times more expensive, then that's an objection. In addition to that, there's some prerequisites that that that you have to do to deal with, which can sometimes be objections. And that's governance. So for example, in certain countries incineration may be written into legislation, whereas in in other countries you may have the possibility to use alternative methods, say for example, chemical sterilization or any other type of technology not as hard and fast even in the US, you're, you know, you can have federal US EPA approval, but in every state does things differently. You know, California would do things completely different to Texas. We'll do completely different to New York and to Massachusetts. So that can be an objection. It can be a something that we as a company, obviously, we're you know, when we start, we look at, you know, the path of least resistance. Us is an important marker for us. The EU is an important market for us. 

But we will look at, you know, where is the problem. The most acute. Where do we see where is the motivation the largest. And then any regulatory barriers do help us or to object to us moving into this,into this region. If there's not, we proceed. If there is and we think the market is right, we invest in the regulatory people to get that approval. 

So far, we've been successful. Love to say that the timelines are really quick and that some states they are, some states are not. But at the end of the day, the benefit is there when you when it's a validation for ourselves as a company that we're doing something right. When companies and states approve the technology as well.  

00:17:22 — Using data to measure recovery

Eryn Devola 
Paul, I understand you guys started as a hardware company, but now you've got more and more going on in the software space. Can you talk a little bit about that?  

Paul Coyne 
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, the entire decision making process is often driven by data. So you know, where again, what are the C-suite level. You know we're looking at landfill avoidance. We're looking at Cop one emissions reduction of water, reduction of power, looking at, you know, polymer constitutions of 

building materials that are going through these facilities. And that data is incredibly useful. It's useful as a reporting tool, but it's also useful as a reporting as a motivation tool. So when we report, you know, whenwhen we meet the requirements, say for example, the CSRD report, you have to benchmark and then look at reductions versus previous years. So that's where you know, partnerships with Siemens and Insights Hub has become really, really useful. 

Our own product Generations Connect will benchmark versus legacy methods. Looking at, you know, recycling rates power reduction, water reduction lots of motivation obviously from the bottom up as well. So middle management and the actual doers of the project. So you can physically show somebody that last year this amount of waste was destined for landfill or incineration. This year this is what we've recovered. 

This is part has gone back into resource recovery. That's incredibly important. 

00:19:05 — Designing products for end of life

Eryn Devola 
We talk a little bit today in the theme of this conversation is that waste is a design flaw. And maybe my question to you is what would we have needed to do at the inception of these products? Or what should we be doing as we're designing new products to make sure that we're prepared to look at these resource streams differently,  

 Paul Coyne 
You're always going to have the addition of the complexity of the of the way string. So even if it's a very, very simple product, you perform a test, for example, for the presence of a certain virus or a bacteria or a fungi that adds complications to the way stream. Okay. So you need to deal with that. Deal with that first, right? So regardless of how complex uncomplex the product is, the complexity comes with the process. 

So you need to deal with the process first okay. So take that as a prerequisite to as a starting point to the question. And then the second part of that question is what do we need to do different. So those are the things that we can do different. Right. Products are designed for use right. They're designed with features divided. 

They designed with benefits. As a company, you know it's pointless producing a something for example, simple as a blood tube if it's really, really recyclable, but it's not sterile and it leaks and so on. Okay. So it needs to it needs to perform its function number number one. But there are aspects of products that are ridiculous. Like you know, that they are built for more marketing purposes than they are for usability. So for example, even similar, you know, polymers that are in multiple products that have different colors that immediately move the recyclability and the usability of those products down the value chain. So if it's a if it's a color that, for example, you cannot move to a different, you know, but the addition of another type of of roll color, it's just never going to never go to be that. Then it adds complications to the to the to the, to the product. So designing a product for recycle in theory is, you know, really, you know, aspirational. And there are a hundred steps that can be taken in order to make something more recyclable. It does have to be designed for use. That's primary function. But I guess simpler products that are designed and somehow the product lifecycle and the, you know, within that product marketing department of the of say, for example, a diagnostic company. The I'm pretty sure when you're sitting around that or in detail, the considerations are, you know, ease of use, specificity, sensitivity, time to result. And there's not a huge amount of consideration around actually, you know, how what happens to this product when it goes into the bin. And how can we, you know, do something to make that product more recyclable, more recoverable. And that is a conversation that is probably starting, starting to happen. But if it happened 50 years ago, we might be in a similar situation today. 

 Eryn Devola 
And I think that's one of the things that we grapple with a bit, is that when we design products, we want to be thinking further out. We want to put those requirements in that continue to look at what really are those requirements for the product, not just in that feature set, but in that end of life set. I think that that's something that we together in our companies are grappling with about how to best manage those requirements, understand those requirements and get them written in early in the process. 

 Paul Coyne 
Absolutely. Absolutely. 

00:22:48 — One big question

Eryn Devola 
Paul, it's been a wonderful conversation today, and we like to end every episode with one big question, which is what's your optimistic outlook? What's changed in the last couple of years that make you think that we are going in the right way? 

 Paul Coyne 
I would start by saying that I do feel that things are going in the right direction. I consider myself as a optimistic realist. Right. I genuinely do, and there's a number of things that, you know, make me feel like we're going in the right direction. The first one I would say is that governance has changed so for big companies, initiatives like CSRD has come in. The companies have to take these things seriously.   

It's not just something that is nice to have. It's something that is needed to have. So there are real carrot and stick initiatives there finds out coming true. If we don't, if we don't remove and reduce the amount of missions that are associated with the with the process companies are starting instead of a, you know, a token gesture company is really starting to embed sustainability strategy at a C-suite, which is really, really important. 

I have spent my most of my career in the diagnostic world, and it's only in the last kind of 4 to 5 years that I've I've joined the team at Envetec, and I even I can see in the last 4 or 5 years the progress that has been made. And that is really, really lightning to see that. Right? 

I would say the second part of the, the, the kind of the overall picture that makes me quite optimistic is that there is investment in the in these types of companies for there is mechanical advanced recycling. There is a very strong focus from manufacturers. And in terms of extended producer responsibility, that was that was something like a soundbite. That was five years ago. That's a real thing today. Right? So companies are not just seeing that this is something that is is needed, but they're also seeing the commercial benefit of it. Okay. So if I can provide a platform or a solution to your product at the front end, but also a solution at the back end of the product that went whence it's consumed, it makes me more likely to use your product at the front end. 

So companies are starting to cut in on that. Absolutely. I can sell you the product, but I also can help you deal with the problem at the at the back end. And that's a real that's a real thing. And then the last thing that makes me feel optimistic is that I'm 25 years into a career. With any luck, I've got another 25 years to go. 

So the people that are coming into the industry now, as I mentioned about, you know, those lab technicians that are coming in. They're coming in with that mindset that this is not acceptable. So in 25 years from now, those young graduates that are coming into the industry, they're going to be in decision making roles. So it's not that the, you know, the decision making process to embed strategic kind of I would say policies is going away. 

I would say it's getting stronger and stronger as years as go on. So takeaway message governance is is good commercially it's good. And I guess just from a, you know, hater and people point of view, I think it's going in the right direction. 

Eryn Devola 
Love it Paul. 

This is really interesting technology. And I know a lot of our listeners may want to learn more. Where would you send them? 

00:26:21 — Final thoughts

Paul Coyne 
The probably the best place to go is towards the website. Envetec.com. And there's some really interesting information can be found there. There's a lot of case studies, some work that we've done obviously with BD, with Nord Wells, Scottish Water, incredible case studies that have demonstrated not just theoretical processes, but practical processes and how you can actually take something from what we hope happens to actually what happens in the in the real life. So that's a really good place to to maybe learn a little bit more about the technology, I would suggest. 

Eryn Devola 
Thank you so much for joining us today. 

Paul Coyne 
Lovely to meet. Thank you. 

Lauren Espin 
Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Optimistic Outlook. Be sure to tune in for more conversations with leaders shaping technology for a better tomorrow. Please subscribe to the Optimistic Outlook wherever you listen to your podcasts and be sure to share the podcast with a friend or colleague.