Recycling is often ignored in corporate sustainability, despite its potentially significant impact. We are already reducing CO2 emissions by 700 million tons each year and have the potential to reduce emissions by 1 billion tons by 2030.
Global Recycling Day aims to highlight this opportunity and ensure it gets the attention it needs to achieve this goal.
small changes have a big impact
Incorporating recycling may seem like a complicated transformation, but it can be achieved by making small changes to daily operations.
Hugh Scantlebury, CEO and founder of Aqilla, highlights how organizations can tackle sustainability in practice. “Sustainability doesn’t have to start with large capital investments or complex environmental strategies.
“Often it starts with the day-to-day decisions companies make about how they use resources and manage waste.”
At Scantlebury, this must be implemented within a broader strategy. “Recycling is often thought of as something that happens at the end of a product’s useful life. But in reality, it should start much earlier, when organizations decide what to buy, how long to use it, whether it can be reused, and whether it can be repaired before being replaced.”
He added: “When sustainability becomes part of the day-to-day thinking across procurement, operations and finance, it ceases to be a one-off initiative and becomes part of how the organization operates.”
Taran Rai, Corporate Sustainability Manager at Epson UK, echoed this statement, saying: “Recycling must be seen as part of a wider circular strategy. A fully circular economy may feel ambitious, but progress often starts with focused, practical steps.”
She pinpointed why organizations need to start now, emphasizing that “incremental measures scaled up over time can have a meaningful impact.”
Obstacles to achieving corporate sustainability
When companies take a short-sighted approach to their strategy, recycling programs can quickly be forgotten, leading to more negative long-term consequences.
Lai acknowledges that technological developments can complicate efforts to become more sustainable. “Innovation is essential, but it also brings increased demand for energy, water and finite raw materials,” she said.
“Data centers, semiconductor manufacturing, and connected devices all rely on resource-intensive systems, and with the rapid expansion of AI and data infrastructure, the shift to mass consumption is reshaping industrial priorities. If recycling remains a downstream mindset, we risk exacerbating these pressures.”
Recycling regulations shape change
Regulatory requirements are beginning to hold companies accountable and prompting changes in recycling efforts.
Saskia van Ghent, Chief Sustainability Officer at Blue Yonder, commented on the regulatory changes: “New regulations have shifted focus to Scope 3 emissions and require greater transparency across the supply chain. For example, the EU’s Ecodesign Regulation for Sustainable Products (ESPR) is encouraging companies to increase recycled content and address barriers such as costly reverse logistics.”
Paraic O’Lochlainn, vice president of eMaint at Fluke Corporation, emphasizes this drive for impactful sustainable practices, stating, “There is no longer room for vague promises or wishy-washy goals. Companies are now expected to demonstrate how sustainability is delivered on the factory floor.”
The future of recycling
Despite some challenges, companies are finding ways to reduce waste through recycling efforts and technological development.
Scantlebury explains how to find harmony between production and sustainability: “Simple steps like extending the life of equipment, reducing unnecessary packaging, and properly separating recyclable materials can have a meaningful impact if adopted consistently.”
He concluded about Aqilla’s focus: “We are committed to extending the life of our equipment rather than frequent upgrades, and we only work with partners who share a similar commitment to sustainability.”
O’Lochlainn agrees, pointing out how smarter maintenance is key to extending lifespan. “Business to improve maintenance The case is usually made from a financial perspective, and for good reason.” He explains that even if equipment failures are small at first, “over time, the likelihood of sudden failures increases, and costs quickly spread when failures occur.However, if the same assets are kept within tolerance, the pattern looks different.With fewer failures, the plant spends less time recovering, and avoidable waste is generated from stop-start production.”
“Predictive and condition-based maintenance can help organizations prevent larger failures in the future, but only if treated as a way of working rather than a bolt-on project,” he continues. “The next stage of sustainable manufacturing will depend less on what companies announce and more on what sites can sustain. If we want energy baselines and early warning signals to lead to sustained improvement, maintenance cannot be peripheral to performance management. It has to be part of how sites operate.”
Some companies are now taking steps to improve their recycling efforts, paving the way for others to follow suit.
About this, AVEVA Paula Reichert, Vice President, Northern Europe, discussed this in the context of water usage and suggested: “A key strategy for reducing water usage is recycling. Food processing and other cleaning-intensive industries use large amounts of water to clean raw materials and equipment. Modern treatment technologies, such as membrane bioreactors, can clean this to a point where it can be reused, allowing organizations to recycle a large portion of the wash water.”
She added: “This gives field teams confidence and visibility into the system even as tap water usage is reduced, keeping the engineering demands associated with water treatment low.”
Reflecting on the role of technology in the future of corporate sustainability, Van Ghent said: “Technology is significantly improving the way organizations approach sustainability and moving us closer to a truly circular economy.”
She continued: “AI-powered systems provide end-to-end visibility across all supply chain tiers, allowing companies to track materials, assess environmental impact, and ensure regulatory compliance.
“These solutions also reduce reverse logistics complexity and costs by identifying network efficiencies and supporting the recovery and reuse of used and industrial materials.”
Lai concluded by highlighting why the convergence of recycling and technology is essential: “In a year where AI investments are in the spotlight, World Recycling Day is a reminder that resilience depends on resource management. Technological advances and circular thinking should not be in competition, they must progress together.”
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