Industrial Symbiosis

Industrial Symbiosis

Amount awarded: £199,504

Led by: United Utilities

Partners: International Synergies Ltd, Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water), Jacobs, and Severn Trent Water plc

Project completed: November 2022

Project overview

Industrial Symbiosis explored new ways waste or by-product materials from one company can be used as the raw materials for another.

United Utilities led a partnership of water companies (Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, Severn Trent Water) and specialist advisors (Jacobs and International Synergies Ltd.) Together, they built new relationships and found opportunities for the supply and demand of reused and repurposed materials to create and test a new market – reducing total cost of operations.

The opportunity of symbiosis as a ‘business-as-usual’ process for the water sector offers long-term sustainable development benefits for the economy, environment, and society by:

• using fewer materials,
• creating jobs in regional economies and reducing costs of all sectors that are engaged through industrial symbiosis, and
• lowering the environmental impact of the industry.

The project aimed to align with the Ofwat Innovation theme to respond and adapt to climate change including achieving the sector ambitions of net zero carbon, zero waste and zero leakage.

Sector-wide problem

• Water companies have daily operations and capital enhancement activity that consumes and transports materials. Occasionally over-stock and waste occurs which is unwanted cost and carbon.
• Circular economy principles are mature in the water sector and industrial symbiosis offers a practical way to divert waste away from landfill to other value-adding uses, reducing cost and carbon – but take-up of these processes is limited due to:
  • Conventional business processes treat each capital project as their own siloed entity – and collaborative working and materials-sharing amongst projects can be hampered by financial accounting methods
  • Supplier contracts may not include a requirement to consider circular economy principles and the cost to amend these contracts is prohibitive
  • Lack of visibility of available materials to those who may be able to use them
  • Managing relationships and materials transfers is complicated and needs dedicated IT system to be efficient; such systems exist but have never been fully tested and are mostly used outside the water sector.

Project objective

The overall aim of the pilot project was to find and disseminate new ways to use waste or by-product material from one entity as the raw materials for another, through industrial symbiosis.

The objectives were as follows:

• To trial adoption of circular economy processes and test their applicability to the water sector
• Review and adapt conventional procurement processes between water companies and construction delivery partners to adopt these principles
• Estimate the types and volumes of materials removed to allow identification of industrial symbiosis matches
• Quantify benefits to inform a business case and share the learnings of this pilot.

Create a “blueprint for the sector” to show others the best pathway to success.

Project Implementation

One of the main objectives of the project was to trial the adoption of IS processes by adapting International Synergies Limited (ISL)’s existing materials reuse software, SYNERGie®4.0 to the water industry and test the effectiveness of the software in matching resource supply/demand while identifying and addressing systemic challenges to its uptake. The aim was to enable the uptake of waste resources from one project as inputs to other projects, thus decreasing the volume of resources discarded as waste.

ISL’s system, SYNERGie®4Water, was produced and launched. Historical data from United Utilities, available on the software SmartWasteTM, was extracted and imported to the new system, allowing analysis for the identification of resources to focus on within the project.

Through the pilot project, United Utilities as the lead water company representative with support from project partners ISL and Jacobs, established a straightforward and reproducible method for identifying industrial symbiosis opportunities as described in the project Integration report using ISL data matching software.

The method was successfully used to demonstrate a proof of concept that identification of industrial symbiosis opportunities was feasible working with construction delivery partners (CDPs). The project team was further supported in water sector input from Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water and Severn Trent Water with whom the trial data, SYNERGie®4Water and processes developed/introduced for matching resource supply/demand was shared. Their feedback has been taken into consideration in developing an implementation framework for IS in the water sector

Most promising opportunities were identified: Due to the predominance of soils and aggregates in the analysis, the project partners concentrated on the construction projects within the company with a main focus on soils and aggregates, while including the other resources associated with such projects.

Extensive data sourcing activities took place across United Utilities and its CDPs, to understand the process from design to procurement to project set up to delivery and finally to project close down.

During design, attention should be given not just to the bill of materials required but also materials liberated during ground works – how these could be used on site and volumes of excess materials that would be produced during a project, together with expected times the materials would be available.

The project worked with a specific project within United Utilities that was in the procurement phase – the Vyrnwy Aqueduct Modernisation Scheme – and included a question in the tender document regarding how circular economy would be embedded into the delivery plan of applicants. This was an initial step into investigating how the principles of IS could be embedded into operating practices more systemically, in this case built into the procurement process.

For live projects, direct data entry onto SYNERGie®4Water and workshops were used to identify potential IS matches. In total three workshops were delivered. Two were face to face and one was virtual. These were small scale, concept proving activities that involved the CDPs Advance Plus and C2V+. In total, 40 potential synergy opportunities were identified with over 23,000 tonnes of resources matched between the participating sites (showing where one site could make use of another site’s resources). Materials included aggregates, clay, fencing, barriers, pipework and others. Data from the workshops was also added to SYNERGie®4Water so that it was available for opportunities identified outside of the workshop, thus allowing further opportunities to be progressed.

Limitations

During the life of the project, some of the opportunities were able to be advanced, with some being completed and some having alternative outcomes.

• For example, the synergy for Rossendale concrete to Vyrnwy Aqueduct renewal scheme was going to progress following a decision to share the processing costs, but the concrete processor agreed to pay £50 per tonne to the CDP if they could keep the resource and sell it on themselves.
• No processing costs were therefore charged to the CDP, resulting in an overall benefit to them through this process, that would not have occurred without first exploring the possibility of processing the concrete and using it at the Vyrnwy scheme.
• The importance here, is that although the initial opportunity did not take place, an alternative opportunity with associated financial and environmental benefits did occur. This is an important aspect to understand when evaluating IS in that more than one opportunity can take place for a resource.

Many limitations to adopting circular economy principles were discovered and the blueprint document proposes ways to overcome these barriers.

Outcomes, impact and future potential

The project objectives were all achieved as follows:

Severn Trent Water adopted the pilot learning and integrated their supply chain with HS2 capital programmes – saving a further £500k and 2,500 tonnes of carbon reduction. Both United Utilities and Severn Trent have continued to drive this industrial symbiosis approach with their supply chain – aiming for AMP8 scale-up.

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Resources:

For more information on Industrial Symbiosis, take a look at the following resources:

• Read the case study from July 2023
• This project was featured in the Circularity in Water Learning Report
• The foreground IPR developed by this project was a sector blueprint, which can be accessed from the Spring Knowledge Transfer Library.