FOCUS AREA
Sustainability
Green technology, recycling, sustainable manufacturing, the circular economy…call it what you will but the push for environmentally friendly manufacturing is growing. Not only in terms of the carbon footprint for building goods and their emissions but also in engineering the end-use disposal. Product lifecycle manufacturing is one of the major tenets of sustainability.
SPARC is developing technologies touching into several of these areas. The recycling and reuse of plastics and e-waste is of critical importance now, due to the growing tonnage of these materials every year being manufactured and disposed of in landfills. At SPARC we know there is a better and more sustainable way to approach this. We’re researching materials and technology to extract valuable minerals and components from e-waste to give them a second lifecycle.
Reusing valuable lithium and rare earth metals from battery systems not only diminishes landfill waste but reduces the demand on the mining sector. Technology to repurpose plastics can convert our waste into valuable energy and construction materials. And researching novel bioplastic systems for sustainable manufacturing can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels for the plastics industry. These are just some of the areas SPARC is developing new materials to contribute to a more sustainable world.
