INDUSTRY 5.0: WHAT WASTE?
The growing interest in INDUSTRY 5.0 results in international discussions related to the topic. Not only companies, like in the last year, but politicians and government representatives open to topics and ask me for details.
Many “experts” publish articles and posts to the topic without deeper knowledge of the topic and many try to turn INDUSTRY 5.0 to the sales tool, which is far from reality. The biggest mistake is that INDUSTRY 5.0 means only robots, or AI, or VR or AR or data and so on, this is not true.
The ground stone of INDUSTRY 5.0 is not a technology, but the process.
It is a process named SYSTEMATIC WASTE PREVENTION
This sentence, you immediately associate wrongly and let me explain why.
WASTE in the meaning of INDUSTRIAL UPCYCLING = systematic waste prevention consists of four categories, which has nothing to do with the categorization used and utilized by the waste industry, or MUDA well known in Japanese, Logistics and Production environment of many factories.
The four categories of waste are
- PHYSICAL WASTE which is trash (items you place in the garbage)
- SOCIAL WASTE which are people willing to work, but having no opportunity due to legal or illegal setup
- URBAN WASTE which is a growing number of industrial, commercial, so as noncommercial brownfields, so as abundant greenfields
- PROCESS WASTE which is, for example, the number of empty trucks on the roads (EU 64%), wrong investment direction, unnecessary spendings and many more
Speaking about waste prevention I started to use many years ago the word WASTING to highlight the process of how waste arises. I use it despite the fact the English language does not understand the same and use for the “wasting” the word “waste” which can be rather confusing especially speaking about categories 2,3 and 4.
I have mentioned this many times before and I am happy all started to understand even in the English speaking countries. In some languages, there is the advantage that the words “waste” and “wasting” are clearly separated
Czech ODPAD and PLÝTVÁNÍ
German ABFAL and VERSCHWENDUNG
French DED DECHÉS and GASPILLÉ
Spanish RESIDUOS and DESPERDICIADO
Japanese 廃棄物 and 無駄に
The separation of both word expressions seems to me to be very important for the language is a base condition for the understanding of the content. It is important to understand that we are wasting without producing waste (physical).
I feel this should be stated once again and hope and believe it will help to understand the complexity of INDUSTRY 5.0 and the reason why it is developed not as the next revolution, but the first industrial evolution ever lead by man (HUMAN).
I hope the last two images clearly indicate the difference for it shows how wasting food produces waste, and I do believe everyone can imagine this process can and should be stopped. We speak about an average of 170.000 kg a month in a single factory, which exceeds 2.000.000 kg a year.
