About Kingspan LIFECycle
At Kingspan, we use our LIFECycle Product Circularity Framework to define what a circular product looks like. It addresses the following five themes:
1. Lean and Circular Design, bespoke to the product and industry need;
2. Input Materials that are circular, and responsibly sourced;
3. Factory Processes without waste or pollution;
4. Extended Life Models, including potential reuse and/or repurposing where appropriate; and
5. Cycling: products that can be broken down to basic materials, which can then be remade into new products.
The third theme is particularly relevant to Kingspan Light + Air since it focuses on eliminating waste and pollution from our factory processes - in other words, essentially resource-efficient manufacturing.
This framework allows us to take meaningful steps forward in our circularity journey. We also currently use it to evaluate our existing product portfolio.
How the Kingspan Light + Air regrind process works
We pride ourselves on our quality control and continuously strive to improve manufacturing efficiency to ensure that what we produce is of the highest possible standard. For this reason, we regrind excess thermoplastic generated at the time of manufacture, as well as the plastic from products that doesn’t meet our high quality standards. In support of this, we actively encourage all of the Light + Air factories within the Kingspan Group to return off-cuts and damaged product to our manufacturing plant, by covering the costs for transport and packing. These materials form part of the regrind mix as well.
The material for regrind goes into isolation for further inspection. It’s then cut into smaller pieces and siloed ready for the process.
We mix the resulting regrind material with virgin materials at a ratio of around 20-30% regrind to 70-80% virgin materials, before we reintroduce it to the manufacturing process.
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