Regional By-Product Synergy Initiative
The project focuses on turning one company's waste into another company's resources in the Kansas City region.
What is By-product synergy?
By-product synergy applies the principles of industrial ecology in which companies work together to match unwanted by-products as resources for new products and processes. The district’s interest in this initiative is to help the region successfully bring neighboring industrial companies and organizations together to discover innovative ways to integrate their operations to cut pollution, reduce material costs and improve internal processes.
This collaborative, business-driven approach enlists industry’s capabilities in addressing waste and pollution issues. In return, regulators have shown a willingness to explore ways of permitting reuse options that can be shown to produce higher environmental results.
Regional Feasibility Study
The MARC Solid Waste Management District worked with Andy Mangan of the U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Development and a team of consultants to determine the feasibility of launching a by-product synergy project in the Kansas City region.
The feasibility study concluded that private and public sector leaders support the implementation of a yearlong project.
By-Product Synergy Feasibility Study:
(PDF files)
Implementation Project
The Implementation project will be led by the Environmental Excellence Business Network (EEBN) to recruit 10 diverse companies as fee-paying participants and engage local, state and federal government agencies for support.
The by-product synergy evaluation process generally lasts for one year. Through extensive collaboration, individual companies work together as a cross-industry team focused on turning every by-product into valuable new products. The synergies uncovered are expected to produce added revenues and cost savings, new business opportunities, and environmental and regulatory benefits to the group and to the region as a whole.
Efforts are underway to secure project funding.
The project team includes EEBN, Mangan, the Elements consulting division of BNIM Architects, Franklin Associates and Bridging The Gap.
For information about the implementation project contact Otavio Silva at Bridging The Gap, 816/561-1087, or Lisa Danbury, solid waste program manager at MARC, 816/474-4240.