Industrial waste management within manufacturing: a comparative study of tools, policies, visions and concepts

Industrial waste is a key factor when assessing the sustainability of a manufacturing process or company. A multitude of visions, concepts, tools, and policies are used both academically and industrially to improve the environmental effect of manufacturing; a majority of these approaches have a direct bearing on industrial waste. The identified approaches have in this paper been categorised according to application area, goals, organisational entity, life cycle phase, and waste hierarchy stage; the approaches have also been assessed according to academic prevalence, semantic aspects, and overlaps. In many cases the waste management approaches have similar goals and approaches, which cause confusion and disorientation for companies aiming to synthesise their management systems to fit their waste management strategy. Thus, a study was performed on how waste management approaches can be integrated to reach the vision of zero waste in manufacturing.