Green manufacturing

制造業(yè)環(huán)保

The circular economy

循環(huán)經(jīng)濟

Battery-makers are learning that recycling should not be an afterthought

電池制造商逐漸認識到回收不應(yīng)該是事后補救措施

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1 MANUFACTURING IS A one-way business. Raw materials go into a factory and finished products come out. Once those goods are sold, producers (initial guarantees apart) usually wash their hands of them. Certainly they do not worry, unless compelled to by law, about how the products are disposed of. Most are burnt or rot in landfill, which pollutes the planet. In only 50 years the world’s consumption of raw materials has nearly quadrupled, to more than 100bn tonnes, according to the latest Circularity Gap Report from the World Economic Forum. Less than 9% of this is reused, resulting in a big waste of materials.

rot 腐爛?

制造業(yè)是一個單向行業(yè)。原材料進入工廠，然后成品制出。然而，一旦這些產(chǎn)品被售出，生產(chǎn)者（除了最初的售后承諾）通常會洗手不干。當(dāng)然，除非法律強制要求，他們并不擔(dān)心產(chǎn)品處理方式。大多數(shù)產(chǎn)品都被焚燒或在垃圾填埋場腐爛，這種廢物處理方式污染了地球。根據(jù)世界經(jīng)濟論壇的最新循環(huán)性差距報告，在短短50年內(nèi)，世界原材料的消耗幾乎翻了兩番，超過1000億噸。其中只有不到9%的材料被重新利用，造成了材料的巨大浪費。

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2 Industry does talk about sustainability and recycling, but much of that is greenwashing intended to improve brand images. Yet in the circular economy the bottom line, too, can benefit from greenery. This is especially so in the case of “gigafactories”, so called because their output of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) is measured in gigawatt hours (GWh).

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工業(yè)界確實在談?wù)摽沙掷m(xù)發(fā)展和回收利用，但其中大部分是為了提高品牌形象而進行的環(huán)?；献?。然而，在循環(huán)經(jīng)濟中，企業(yè)最終贏利也可以從環(huán)保中受益。在 "千兆工廠"的情況下尤其如此。這樣取名的原因是它們?yōu)殡妱悠嚕‥V）生產(chǎn)電池的產(chǎn)量是以千兆瓦時（GWh）計算的。

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3 Every carmaking country wants gigafactories. Batteries are the costliest part of an EV, so making them is lucrative. But they contain materials such as lithium, cobalt, manganese and nickel that are pricey and can be hard to obtain. Supply chains are long and complicated. Buyers risk being tarnished by their suppliers’ (or suppliers’ suppliers’) poor environmental and labour standards. Reusing materials makes sense.

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每個汽車制造國都希望建立千兆工廠。電池是電動車中成本最高的部分，因此制造電池是有利可圖的。但它們包含的材料，如鋰、鈷、錳、鎳都價格昂貴且難以獲得。供應(yīng)鏈?zhǔn)锹L而復(fù)雜的。買方有可能因其供應(yīng)商（或供應(yīng)商的供應(yīng)商）的不良環(huán)境和不完善勞工標(biāo)準(zhǔn)而名譽受損。所以重復(fù)使用材料是有意義的。

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4 Being new, most gigafactories are designed with recycling in mind from the start. The result is a circular production process, not a linear one. The idea is that once batteries reach the ends of their lives, they should go back to a factory, where their ingredients can be recovered and put into new batteries.

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電車電池作為一種新事物，大多數(shù)千兆工廠從設(shè)計之初就考慮到了回收。其設(shè)計結(jié)果是一套循環(huán)的生產(chǎn)過程，而不是一個線性的。我們的想法是，一旦電池達到其壽命終點，它們就應(yīng)該回到工廠，在那里它們的材料成分可以被回收并投入到新電池中。

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5 Gigafactories are not yet exemplars of the circular economy, but they are laying the foundations. Northvolt, a Swedish battery-maker, aims by 2030 to produce 150GWh of batteries— enough to power some 2m EVs—from the three gigafactories it is completing. By then, around half its raw materials should come from recycling old batteries. Northvolt is not alone. Using recycling, renewable power and other measures, CATL—a Chinese firm and the world’s biggest producer of EV batteries—thinks it should eventually be possible to shrink the carbon footprint of a battery towards zero.

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千兆工廠暫時還不是循環(huán)經(jīng)濟的典范，但它們正在奠定基礎(chǔ)。瑞典電池制造商Northvolt的目標(biāo)是到2030年生產(chǎn)150GWh的電池--足夠為大約200萬輛電動車提供動力—其目標(biāo)來自它正在建造的三個千兆工廠。屆時，大約一半的原材料應(yīng)來自于舊電池的回收。Northvolt并不孤單。寧德時代是一家中國公司，也是世界上最大的電動車電池生產(chǎn)商，它認為利用回收、可再生能源和其他措施，最終應(yīng)該可以將電池的碳足跡縮小到零。

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6 Carmakers such as the Renault Group and Stellantis, owner of brands that include Fiat, Chrysler and Peugeot (and whose big shareholder, Exor, also owns a stake in The Economist’s parent company), are both setting up circular-economy businesses. This is not just for batteries, but also for repairing and reconditioning parts and vehicles. Each of these operations will, bosses hope, have annual revenues of more than €2bn ($2bn) by the end of the decade, and be profitable. Renault reckons around 85% of a car is recyclable, but only 20-30% of the materials in new vehicles are recycled, often from other goods. Circular manufacturing would greatly increase that share.

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雷諾集團和Stellantis（菲亞特、克萊斯勒和標(biāo)致等品牌的所有者，其大股東Exor也擁有《經(jīng)濟學(xué)人》母公司的股份）等汽車制造商都在建立循環(huán)經(jīng)濟業(yè)務(wù)。這不僅僅是指電池，還包括維修和翻新零件和車輛。老板們希望，到十年后，這些業(yè)務(wù)的年收入都將超過20億歐元（20億美元），并實現(xiàn)盈利。雷諾認為，一輛汽車中約有85%是可以回收的，但新車中只有20-30%的材料是可以回收的，而且往往是從其他商品中回收的。循環(huán)制造將大大增加這一份額。

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7 Could other industries do something similar? Fast fashion is a notoriously wasteful business in which little-worn clothes are burnt or dumped. America’s Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the recycling rate for clothing and footwear is just 13%. A big part of the reason is the use of mixed textiles, which are hard to recycle. Clothing companies could, like gigafactories, re-engineer their processes to employ fibres that are easier to handle. Consumer electronics is another business that creates heaps of waste, despite electronic circuits containing precious materials such as gold and silver, and electric motors being made from rare-earth metals like neodymium and dysprosium. Fortunes could yet be made in the urban mining of last year’s gadgets and yesterday’s togs.

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其他行業(yè)可以做類似的事情嗎？快速時尚是一個臭名昭著的浪費行業(yè)，在這個行業(yè)中，幾乎沒有穿過的衣服會被燒掉或丟棄。美國環(huán)境保護局估計，服裝和鞋類的回收率只有13%。很大一部分原因是它們采用混合紡織品材料生產(chǎn)，這種材料很難回收。服裝公司可以像千兆工廠一樣，重新設(shè)計它們的生產(chǎn)流程，采用更容易處理的纖維。消費類電子產(chǎn)品是另一個產(chǎn)生大量垃圾的行業(yè)，盡管電子電路含有金和銀等貴金屬材料。電機也是由釹和鏑等稀土金屬制成。在城市開采去年的小玩意和昨天的衣服也可以獲得財富。