- Day:
- Tuesday 18 - Wednesday 19 November 2025
- Time:
- 18:00 - 19:00
- Online booking:
- Book here
This lecture explores how circular economy (CE) principles, particularly industrial symbiosis, can enhance business resilience and sustainability. Focusing on the paper manufacturing sector, it demonstrates how waste streams can be transformed into valuable resources, offering both environmental and economic benefits. The CE framework challenges the unsustainable ‘take-make-dispose’ model by closing loops through reuse, recycling and regenerative design. Tools such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Butterfly Diagram and the ReSOLVE framework (Regenerate, Share, Optimise, Loop, Virtualise, Exchange) provide businesses with strategies to embed circularity into operations, improve competitiveness and align with net-zero goals.
Construction is a crucial sector, as this industry alone is responsible for nearly 40% of global CO₂ emissions. By redirecting paper industry by-products into building materials, significant decarbonisation can be achieved.
Three case studies illustrate this in practice:
- Paper digestate as a water substitute in concrete, reducing demand for fresh water
- Paper fly ash as a cement replacement, cutting embodied carbon while maintaining structural performance
- Bioenergy optimisation from paper waste, contributing to industrial decarbonisation. These initiatives showcase the potential of cross-sector collaboration to create low-carbon solutions while reducing industrial waste burdens.
The University of Salford’s Centre for Sustainable Innovation (CSI) acts as a catalyst for such work, connecting academia, industry and policymakers. The lecture concludes that circularity is not a compliance cost but a growth opportunity, it enables engineers and businesses to innovate, decarbonise and lead the transition to a sustainable future.’