Sustainable Manufacturing: Why And How We’re Going Net-zero Carbon By 2030
In 10 years, we’ll be 100% carbon neutral. Here’s why, and how we’re going to do it.
The time for sustainable manufacturing
It’s no secret: the manufacturing industry needs to change. In 2016, the sector pumped out 2.77 gigatonnes of CO2 globally. Today, the manufacturing industry is responsible for 10.6% of all global CO2 emissions. These are global numbers, and admittedly they also take into account other parts of the manufacturing sector, like mining, but they still make for some alarming reading.
From emission-heavy factories to far-away imports, the manufacturing industry accounts for more than 60% of direct industrial emissions in the UK. And the numbers come from all different parts of the process, think energy use in factories, logistics, and a whole heap of other supply chain elements.
We might have our sustainable by design system in place. but we know as much as anyone we need to go further. The UK government has committed to a net-zero carbon economy by 2050 – we’re thinking of getting there 20 years earlier.
What is net-zero carbon?
In a nutshell: carbon neutrality. No carbon. Zero. Zilch. There are two ways to go about it. Either by balancing carbon dioxide emission with removal (through carbon offsetting) or eliminating emissions altogether. Now the second one could be quite tricky, so we’re mixing both to get to our goal.
Case Station: a case for sustainable manufacturing
A couple of initiatives that we hope can push us towards our net-zero carbon goal.
Back to Base initiative – accredited recycling
Humans throw away 300m tons of plastic every year. But why? Single-use, no motives to re-use, or, for many, it’s that there’s no recycling structure to deal with what they’re throwing away. Not anymore.
Our Back to Base initiative is an end-of-life recycling scheme for our community. Once our products have reached their end (it’ll take a while!), customers can send them back to us and, working with Sabic; we’ll recycle them. All free of charge.
Recycling is a big thing for us. Our Milan manufacturing hub is a hotspot for recycling local water bottles. They’ll soon be making a new product (shh!) for us from recycled polyester – a source of plastic that would otherwise go into landfill.
Keep it local – cutting down on delivery emissions
COVID-19 has highlighted how fragile our supply chains are – with goods and logistics halted from all parts of the world. Our ambition is to manufacture products in-country – so we’re not drawing on materials from across the globe or emitting more than we have to through logistics. Currently, we have five manufacturing hubs worldwide: UK, USA, Korea, Australia and Italy.
How it works is, customers place orders online, then based on where they are in the world, we assign their order to the nearest manufacturing hub. Ultimately, we plan to build more manufacturing hubs across the world – starting with the Middle East – so that we can drastically reduce delivery emissions.
Will you buy into sustainable manufacturing?
Sustainability isn’t just lip service for us. It’s something we’re working hard to achieve every day. In our supply chains, our manufacturing processes, and our choice of materials, to name a few things. At Case Station we work on ideas that change the world. For us, that starts with building a net-zero carbon enterprise. Are you on-board with our mission? Next time you’re thinking about buying a sustainable smartphone case for your new iPhone, take a look at ours here.