Sustainable by Design

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI) holds a trademark on the phrase “Design for Recycling,” and the group has built an initiative around the phrase to work with and reward manufacturers who consider recycling aspects when designing and making products.

ISRI and its member companies benefit when products are made with materials for which there are established recycling markets and that are assembled in ways that avoid creating barriers to recycling.

The harder work in spearheading the initiative over the years has sometimes been convincing manufacturers that Design for Recycling also is in their best interests.

Product makers have other priorities that can supersede the recycling aspect: meeting product safety and liability standards; using cost-competitive materials and techniques; and offering an attractive design that separates a product from the competition.

To help compete with these priorities, ISRI has made the argument that if the private sector fails to plan for recycling, the public sector may step in and make its own plans. In a column published in an engineering magazine in 2005, ISRI General Counsel and Vice President of Government Relations Scott Horne notes, “Design for Recycling was created in part to head off governmental mandates like the European Union’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive or End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) Directive. ISRI has consistently advocated that manufacturers voluntarily adopt the principles of Design for Recycling to stave off governmental intervention.”

Providing perhaps the foremost boost to Design for Recycling efforts, however, has been the sustained boost in commodity prices.

The economics of recycling have never made more sense than they have in the past 10 years, as the tremendous growth of China and other nations has placed a strain on mineral, metallic and other resources.

Manufacturers who in the 1990s may have paid scant attention to the basic materials levels of their supply chains have witnessed the issue emerge front and center.

The threat of imposed producer responsibility may still lurk as an issue, but it has been joined or even supplanted by the desire to re-introduce basic materials into the manufacturing process by harvesting scrap materials.

The list of companies that have shifted from considering a closed-loop recycling program a hassle into making it a strategic initiative is growing.

There are few things more volatile than commodity prices, which ultimately could result in a shift back away from recycling as a corporate priority. But as of 2010, advocates of Design for Recycling have an agreeable corporate audience.