Sustainability, motivated by our green heart or financial gain?

Circular production, from residual material to raw material, lower costs and higher profits.

More than 10 years ago, the first reports emerged in Brussels about withholding taxes as a means to stop the ever-growing mountain of plastic waste. At that time, the developments surrounding a circular economy and therefore circular production were not nearly as concrete as they are now. And, knowing that politics generally needs 20 years before anything happens, we could of course have sat back and waited to see what would happen. And, to be honest, we didn't get out of the starting blocks right away. But when China closed its doors to plastic waste in early 2018, our plastic residual flow started to cost real money and our creative brains started to bubble.

But coming up with an alternative to make our restroom (around 40,000 kg annually!!) more sustainable was certainly not easy.

Supported by Techport, we then organized a so-called Hackathon, a meeting in which we looked for creative and concrete solutions towards sustainability with various participants. Together with universities, students and fellow entrepreneurs, we have brainstormed about circular production with the aim of not only utilizing our residual flow but also reducing our CO2 footprint.

The idea

Numerous ideas emerged from this Hackathon. Most are either financially or technically unfeasible. But a solution may have turned out to be feasible: grinding the residual material into small granules that can serve as a basis for injection molding.

A completely new technology for us. But without risk there is no progress. No guts, no glory!

VanDerEng is a typical SME organization; no large investment funds nor an extensive R&D department, but dedicated, smart employees, with a heart for production and innovation. That is why we started, lean & mean, with the purchase of a small forty-year-old injection molding machine, which was on its way to demolition. Have a test mold made and Ordinary but let's try...

The implementation

It certainly didn't happen automatically, but gradually we got better and better products from the machine. Ultimately, we had a real mold made and started making an adjacent product for a market we were already in; the event market: round consumption tokens. Who doesn't know this one?

What followed exceeded our expectations because within 3 weeks we had so many orders that we were at the maximum production capacity of this old and small machine...

With some trepidation we purchased a larger machine, heavier grinding mills, shredders, hoppers, a flatbed printer... and before we knew it we were making a mature new product and an additional revenue model was created! And we now produce a small one every year 15 million round consumption tokens, shopping cart tokens, board game accessories and industrial components. We can now reuse almost all of our residual polystyrene and in the foreseeable future our residual polyethylene flow will also be fully processed into new films for labels and tags! Circular production through and through!

The funny thing was that in this development process (born out of necessity) we became more and more aware that a switch to producing circular plastics was in fact not that big of a deal. Partly due to our small scale, we have been forced to work circularly for years. We have been applying the circularity circle (Rethink, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle & Recover) for years, partly but completely unconsciously.

The result

Forced by the environment - read external developments - the step towards consciously circular production was in fact a small step. And although investing in sustainability based on the government's mandatory policy does not always feel pleasant, the market segments in which we operate are certainly receptive to more sustainable products. And yes, it is fair to say that the necessarily high investments in recycling equipment and new production resources are subsequently recouped in a healthy way.

In other words, we are no longer embarrassed that money can be made from sustainability.

If you would like to know more about the ins and outs, about our process and you fancy a nice cup of coffee, I would like to tell you more about our recycled, circular products and the processes that go through to create these products. come.