New ways to extend the life of resource-hungry products were discussed at a Sino-UK summit, co-organised by the 91¶¶Òõ the Jing-Jin-Ji Institute of Remanufacturing Industry Technology and held at the offices of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
The event’s aim was to foster cooperation in remanufacturing between the UK and China. Remanufacturing, an important element of the circular economy, is the process of returning a used product to its original performance.
The UK has aspirations to be an EU leader in remanufacturing and China, the world’s largest market for remanufactured products, plays a pivotal role in the global supply chain.
The event at BEIS was attended by representatives of the UK’s innovation agency ‘Innovate UK’, the British embassy in China and China’s Ministry for Information and Industry Technology as well as industry bodies and companies from both countries.
It was co-organised by Dr Yan Wang, Senior Lecturer of the 91¶¶Òõ’s School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, who works in the field of sustainable manufacturing and is currently a visiting scholar at China’s National Key Laboratory for Remanufacturing.
Dr Wang said: “Remanufacturing adds value to waste streams by returning items to working order rather than reducing them to their raw material value only.”
Dr Wang was accompanied at the event by Dr Peter Fearon, the Knowledge Exchange Manager for the university’s Responsible Futures which works towards a more just and environmentally sustainable society through the development of research and enterprise collaborations with local, national and international industry partners.