Early Booking ends in 6 days! Registration is open here for the 4th Annual Conference of the Centre for Industrial Sustainability with an early booking discount (£220) until Monday May 6.The conference will take place at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge from 6-7 July. Speakers from:  Toyota | Interface | M&S | EEF | Saitex | TU Berlin | Elvis and Kresse | Unilever | HVM Catapult | Manufacturing Commission | and more...

Visit our website for more information and the full conference programme.

The Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) will be holding their inaugural Sustainability Leadership Laboratory (Lab) in collaboration with the Centre for Industrial Sustainability. Focusing on some of the most pressing issues and cutting edge opportunities relating to sustainable business, Labs have been designed for senior sustainability professionals and will be held biannually.

Prof Steve Evans and Dr Doroteya Vladimirova will lead the first lab 'Transforming Business to Deliver Sustainable Value' on 16-17 July 2015, Moller Centre, Cambridge which will provide participants with a deep dive into new tools for sustainable businesses, with a specific focus on learning from real business challenges. For more information about the lab and booking, visit the CISL website [here].

Steve Evans, Dai Morgan and Lloyd Fernando spent a week looking at the current operations and future plans for Brandix India Apparel City (BIAC) in Andhra Pradesh, India.  BIAC is a unique, integrated apparel supply chain city spread over 1000 acres and bringing together world class apparel chain partners from the design table to consumer brands. Together with local universities, the Centre hopes to work with Brandix for the long term to help make BIAC into the most sustainable apparel manufacturing site in the world.

A cross-party group coalition of Parliamentarians and leading industry members hosted an event on Thursday 5th February at the Houses of Parliament to mark the start of a new inquiry into the long term sustainability of the sector in the UK. The inquiry will seek to make practical policy recommendations addressing the emerging area of industrial sustainability and what it regards as the key issues and themes currently affecting UK manufacturing. The group will examine the issues that threaten the UK's potential industrial growth, including questions over innovation, skills, finance and taxation, energy, SMEs, trade and investment. [more]

Since 2005 Elvis & Kresse have been reclaiming materials to make their range of unique hand-made products. Born out of a desire to give new life to decommissioned fire-hose from the London Fire Brigade, they are constantly searching for more materials to grow their range of bags, belts, wallets and other home and personal accessories. Elvis & Kresse now reclaim more than 10 different materials and have rescued over 200 tonnes of waste material so far. The business was established to solve environmental problems, waste problems in particular, but the business also has a social conscience and re-distributes up to 50% of profits to projects and charities related to the unique materials they reclaim. Hear Elvis & Kresse Co-founder and Director, Kresse Wesling, talk about radical upcycling at the Centre's Annual Conference on 6 – 7 July at Fitzwilliam College Cambridge. Find out more about Elvis & Kresse on their website http://elvisandkresse.com/.

The Centre for Industrial Sustainability is pleased to be part of a successful Horizon 2020 funding bid proposal in response to the call Energy and resource management systems for improved efficiency in the process industries (SPIRE-06-2015). Coordinated by ISQ in Portugal, the MAESTRI project (Energy and resource management systems for improved efficiency in the process industries) has been awarded 5,673,360.00 € and will bring together 15 organisations from 5 different countries.  The Centre's role on the project will be the Industrial Symbiosis experts responsible for Industrial Symbiosis models and simulations and Eco-efficiency methodologies. [more]

Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) has launched a new industry research partnership with Cranfield University entitled Sustainable Manufacturing for the Future. The study will take place over the next six months with researchers set to deliver their findings in autumn 2015. Several Centre researchers participated in the launch including Mark Jolly, Palie Smart, and Peter Ball (Cranfield), Nancy Bocken and Elliott More (Cambridge) and Geraldine Brennan (Imperial). [more]

Don’t miss the webinar 'Resource Efficient Manufacturing: An Energy Based Approach' on 14 May 2015 by Sanober Khattak of De Montfort University. This is the fourth in the Centre’s 2015 webinar series which was launched in February. Introduced by Dr Peter Ball at Cranfield, the webinars will mainly focus on the outputs from the Centre's research covering the grand challenges and the PhD projects within them. However, other Centre industrial or academic collaborators are welcome to contribute. Please contact Peter at p.d.ball@cranfield.ac.uk if you are interesting in contributing.  You can listen again to the previous 4 webinars and/or download the slides here. The fifth webinar in the series will be on 4 June 2015 on 'Sustainable value creation in manufacturing: Understanding the contribution of maintenance function', with Dr Maria Holgado of Cambridge.

In March Dr Mélanie Despeisse and Ian Bamford ran a series of pilot events using a new eco-efficiency tool with Airbus SAS at their factory in Broughton. The tool uses a card game format to engage staff in varied roles to improve their understanding of the opportunities that exist to make energy saving improvements in a factory environment. [more]

Prof Steve Evans gave a keynote talk at a forum organised by the Universidade Federal do Ceará for industry, academics and government ministers on the challenges faced by Brazilian Industry to be competitive and sustainable in light of the economic, social and environmental issues they face. Steve spoke about short and long term hopes for industrial sustainability. He was very grateful to his host Dr Monica Abreu of UFC for the opportunity to participate in the event.

The Centre for Industrial Sustainability's fourth annual Cohort Retreat was held at Losehill Hall in the Peak District from 26-30 January. More than 60 senior professors, industrialists, post docs and researchers from 17 institutions, four businesses and 22 Countries came together to share their passion for making manufacturing more sustainable.

The event was themed around the future of manufacturing and the researchers were challenged to develop a personal vision for what the future might hold and explore what their roles might be.[more]

Congratulations to Dr Ritsuko Ozaki whose paper, with Imperial College colleague Dr Isabel Shaw, has been recognised by the British Sociological Association. The paper Entangled Practices: Governance, Sustainable Technologies, and Energy Consumption which was published in the journal Sociology was the runner up in the British Sociological Association’s Climate Change Group’s Annual Article Prize.

High end denim manufacturer Saitex is committed to implementing sustainable practices in their business.  Based in Vietnam, Saitex processes and methods ranging from water recycling, solar energy, green chemistry and air management systems demonstrate the company's sustainability credentials. Hear more about radical systems innovation in the apparel Industry from Sanjeev Bahl, president of Saitex at the Centre’s Annual Conference in July.

The Centre had a strong presence at the Sustainable Design and Manufacturing conference (SDM'15) in Seville earlier this month. Peter Ball and Nancy Bocken chaired special sessions on Energy Efficient Manufacturing Systems and Sustainable Business Models & Value Networks and several Centre researchers presented papers including Aanand Davé who won a best paper award for his paper on factory eco-efficient modelling. [more]

Dr Nancy Bocken delivered a webinar on “Sustainable Business Models for Positive Impact” on 24 April for Lloyds Bank’s Sustainable Business Week. The webinar was intended to stimulate thinking about sustainable business model innovation in banking and also included new work from Angus Yip (Masters student at CISL Cambridge) on the banking sector. For more information please contact Nancy at nmpb2@cam.ac.uk.

Steve Evans and Centre members Steve Hope (Toyota) and Hugo Spowers (Riversimple) discuss manufacturing solutions to the 'Throwaway Society' on Episode 2 of the BBC World Service's Discovery programme 'Throwaway Society' which first aired Monday 23 February 2015. You can listen to the programme here.

The Centre for Industrial Sustainability is delighted to welcome the premium flooring and wall cladding manufacturer Altro as a new industrial member. Family owned and run since 1919, Altro is devoted to sustainability, recycling and reusing their products.

After teaching a select group of students at the University of Genoa on the 27-28 February Prof Steve Evans travelled to China with Prof Sir Mike Gregory for a meeting on March 2-3 between Royal Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Engineering on the future of manufacturing in China. ‘It was exciting to learn of the significantly increased focus in China on manufacturing improving its environmental performance’, commented Steve. Shortly after returning from China Steve gave a keynote talk at Fruit Towers in London on 4 March to the employees and partners of Innocent Drinks at their sustainable manufacturing conference.  Steve enjoyed speaking with the team at Innocent and also the free smoothies!  Steve then spoke at a 2degrees supply chain event in London on 6 March about his work in developing new business models that support durable and sharable benefits from the retailer/supplier relationship.  It was a busy week but exciting to talk to different organisations around the word all focused on making industry more sustainable.

Dr Peter Ball, Dr Maria Holgado and doctoral researcher Miying Yang gave presentations on Data and Value at the Sustainability Live Conference at the NEC in Birmingham in mid April. Doctoral researcher Aanand Davé was invited to show his poster explaining his research on factory Eco-Efficient Modelling in the Innovation Zone. [more]

On 19 February, Nancy Bocken gave a TEDx talk in London for the company Allianz. She discussed “Sustainable Business Models for Positive Impact”. Allianz organized a series of events and TEDx talks in 20 cities to celebrate its 125th anniversary and plan its future strategy with sustainability at its core.

Good progress has been made on the project to develop laser annealing of CdTe photovoltaic panels which began in January at Loughborough University. The team have now developed the ability to simulate complex laser beam geometries and predict their temperature profile within the structure of the solar panel. [more]

CafeDirect came to the IfM to present their challenges to students in the MPhil in Industrial Systems, Manufacture and Management (ISMM) programme at the University of Cambridge. Led by Centre researchers Dr Maria Holgado and Miying Yang, the workshop gave the students a chance to consider a real industry case and CafeDirect a chance to get some fresh views into the challenges they face.  If your business is interested in being involved in a similar workshop please contact the Centre’s commercial director Ian Bamford at imb31@cam.ac.uk.

Many congratulations to Loughborough University Lecturer Leila Sheldrick who recently completed her PhD with her thesis, 'Designing ubiquitous sustainability into product design processes’.

The Centre for Industrial Sustainability participated in the Resource15 conference at Excel in early March.  Resource is a 3 day event where 11,000 professionals share learning and explore opportunities to be circular and resource efficient. [more]

Staff from the Centre for Industrial Sustainability entertained children and young people with 'Sustainability Games' during the Cambridge Science Festival at the Institute for Manufacturing on 21 March 2014. Children learned about manufacturing resource efficiency (and earned a chocolate egg!) in the Chocolate Egg Factory Board Game and about a product life cycle in the 'Life of a plastic bottle' online game and puzzle. [more]

Centre for Industrial Sustainability researcher and Loughborough University lecturer Dr James Colwill married Tsveta Karakasheva on 7 January 2015. Many congratulations to James and Tsveta!