Sustainable manufacturing,life cycle thinking and the circular economy

Achieving sustainable pattems of consumption and production is perhaps the biggest chaLlenge facing our society today. The de-mand for more safe environmentally benign products is rising and many companies are looking for new ways to progressively improve the sus-tainability of their products. Moreover, there are numerous opportunities and countless innovations, technological as well as non-technologi-cal, that need to be exploited to improve the sustainability of products. Manufacturing industry is an important sector of any economy and has the potential to become a driving force for enabling sustainable pattems of production and consumption through introducing efficient production practices and developing products and services that help reduce environmental impacts. The benefits of adopting an integrated policy towards product development based on life cycle thinking and eco-design to stimulate improvement of the environmental performance of each part of product life cycle phases and achieve sustainable pattems of production and consumption are emphasized. The challenges in implementing sustainable manufacturing and the circular economy approaches are listed. A number of solutions are suggested to face up these challenges, for instance, increased awareness of enterprises particularly SME's of product life cycle issues and the opportunities that are available for cost savings and profit making from eco-innovation in product development for both the domestic and export markets and providing practical help and advice directly to enterprises on integrated product development to promote enterprise led Eco-innovation. Aiming at contributing to sus-tainable manufacturing in China, Sino-UK Low Carbon Manufacturing Consortium, a multi-disciplinary research and educational partnership between academia, industry and govemment agencies in the UK and China with interest in sustainable manufacturing issues, has been formed recently. The vision, aims and benefits of membership of the consortium are also discussed.