OSM Group has successfully initiated a program to minimize waste. It is important to work together with our customers to take responsibility towards a more sustainable world. The latest trend in manufacturing is to achieve a zero-waste product design, in materials selection and production process. It is not easy to do, yet OSM are striving to achieve a waste division rate of at least 90% without waste to the landfill to achieve the UL2799 standard, UL’s Environmental Claim Validation Procedure (ECVP).

Every year, people in the world dump a massive 2.12 billion tons of waste. This amount is partly because 99% of the things we buy is thrown away within six months. Every year 37% of waste is disposed of in some sort of landfill worldwide, according to Landfill solutions in Europe.

OSM Group´s Waste Has Decreased Enormously

In OSM´s factory in Dongguan where we have started our zero-waste program, we had a total waste of 118 tons in 2021, including production, chemicals and factory operation. During the first 11 months this year, we have decreased the waste down to 76.7 tons. We recycled 13.3% (17.4 tons) of totally 76.7 tons, this year instead of last year’s 5.43% (6.4 tons) of 118 tons. After an internal study on how to increase recyclable waste, we have found that we might be able to increase the recycle material by another 75%. We can do it inhouse, but also process them through recycle collectors with traceability.

“The goal is for 90% of our waste will be recycled and not go to landfill to meet the international standard UL2799, Zero- Waste to Landfill Certification Program This helps to minimize pollution and give us a greener environment”, says YF Li, Director, Quality Management, OSM Group.

OSM is already environmentally conscious and have been working on sustainability for many years. We have already started to use recycled materials and other nature-based materials such as, Vegan Cactus leather, Vegan Apple leather, Pineapple leather. But as a large manufacturing company in Asia and working with global customers, it is important to continuously work and further improve this program with more material selections, improving product development, process design and production.

“We are going in the right direction, earlier we sold all the scrap and waste to collectors and suppliers. Now we can control it, we analyze everything monthly to understand the level of waste we have, then define a target to achieve the zero waste-program requirements”, says YF Li.

Instead of wasting all the scrap materials, OSM is investigating how to reduce, re-use, and work with the supply chain to transform them into other useful products. The channels include efficient use of materials, use of more green materials, reuse or recycle the waste materials through processing agents and recycle collectors, and joint effort with other products producers to transforms them into another useful products or usage.

All the employees are positive towards OSM going towards a higher level of a green environment impact, on top of that we are hiring a dedicated employee who is going to work with all the teams in OSM on data collection, setting up targets, educating, tracking progress, and follow up so this program will achieve our goal.

“We cannot do this work alone; we are delighted that our customers want to work with us on this, because we need support from the suppliers and customers to make this happen. Also, with the added team member we will make a change through the whole supply chain, and we will achieve the 90% target by 2023”, says YF Li.