TITEL

Closing the loop in Philips Lighting

SPREKER

Maarten ten Houten, Director sustainability & government affairs, Philips Lighting

ABSTRACT

Philips has a long history in sustainability. Since the early nineties ecodesign was focused on what Philips calls the Six Green Focal Areas: energy consumption, packaging, hazardous substances, product weight, lifetime reliability and recycling and disposal. Closing the material loop has not been successful at all, although many companies have made (very ineffective) attempts to design for recycling or take back.

A key difference from current ecodesign practice is that ‘closing the material loop’ has several additional barriers. On top of the effective product design the current value chain needs to be extended. Furthermore this extended value chain has business incentive to improve collection and recycling and production & usage of recycled material. This can only be achieved by a common business agenda in the value chain, where trust and room for each other are created, which is currently not the case in the business paradigm.

Finally this extended value chain is one of the (far) future as LED lighting systems have a long life, leading to additional uncertainty of the returning waste streams. With this in mind it easily understood that when recycling of consumer products has been done, this has been enforced by legislation or are highly subsidized.

Currently there are external trends that are shifting this paradigm, e.g. scarcity, extended producer responsibility and supply security for key materials. As cradle to cradle philosophy has picked up as trend with relative simple products, (e.g. bathroom tiles, toilet paper and carpets) Philips has decided to investigate if this principle can be applied with added value for Philips Lighting. Currently the company is working on closing the material loop, via principles for materials design, physical design and new business models along the supply chain.

BIOGRAFIE

Maarten ten Houten started in 1992 to work at the IVAM Environmental Research in Amsterdam where he did studies on ecodesign, environmental and financial feasibility assessments of product and product systems. In 1995 he joined the Productcentrum of TNO he here managed projects on sustainable innovations, ecodesign and environmental & financial assessments.

From 2001 till 2007 he has worked for the Sustainability Center of Philips Consumer Electronics as senior sustainability advisor. Main topics were: strategic advising & policy making, implementation of ecodesign, benchmarking, green marketing and sustainability awards, chemical management over the supply chain.

Since September 2007 Ten Houten has transferred to the product division of Philips Lighting where he holds a similar position, as sustainability director. Working on ecodesign, chemicals, carbon footprinting, green sales, green portfolio & product management. Since 2009 he is program manager for cradle to cradle projects for his division.