novozymes trend posters

Global Connectivity:Toward a more global, interdependent, networked, and urban world

Developing economies are increasingly benefiting from globalization; high level of FDI inflows is supporting growth

….however people from developing countries are migrating to high-income countries…and to big cities

Mobile phone subscribers in developing countries are increasing…and high income countries have the highest broadband subscription rates

Inspiration brought to you by New Business Development, Enzyme Business

Source: World Resources Institute, 2008

Source: IT University of Copenhagen, 2008

Source: World Investment Report 2008

Source: International Organisation for Migration, 2008

Source: IT University of Copenhagen, 2008

Source: World Development Indicators, 2008

Top 30 economies in terms of broadband subscribers per 100 population, 2007

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Global Environment:Limited natural resources is a challenge and an innovation opportunity

Global freshwater supplies are limited…and more than a billion people still lack access to safe drinking water

Availability of oil is expected to decline as early as of 2012

World cereal production and utilization is rising…. but forests are shrinking in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa

Global energy consumption is anticipated to increase

Source: Peak Oil Consulting, Oct. 2008


World Marketed Energy Use by type (1990-2030)

Source: EIA, 2008

Source: World Bank, 2007

Development in global access to drinking water

Development in forested area in different world regions

Source: FAO, 2008

Global Population:Growing emerging economies, aging developed markets

The world’s population is growing; life expectancy is increasing worldwide.

The proportion of population 60 years or over will double by 2050….and many of these people will live alone.

Increasing imbalances in the agricultural trade balance in many developing countries are causing food crises.

Source: FAO, 2008


World Population (in Billions): 1950-2050

Source: United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects, 2008

Number of persons age +65 over per hundred children under 15: 1950-2050

Source: Population Division, United Nations, 2008

Source: FAO, 2008

Source: UN Population Division, 2007

Source: UN Population Division, 2007

Global Economy:Growing economies battle poverty, technology gap, unemployment

Production is rising globally, and the Asian region is taking a larger stake in world output

Poverty rates are declining in East Asia and Pacific; though many people still live in poverty.

Unemployment rates are highest in the Middle East and North Africa; and low and middle income countries overall lack access to the use of many technologies.


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Source: World Resources Institute, 2009 Source: World Bank, 2008

Source: World Bank and IMF, 2008

Where could this lead?

What is it?

Globality is a concept deriving from the Boston Consulting Group and is defined as the post-globalization step towards a world, where companies from both developed and emerging markets are expanding to compete beyond their home markets.

Global business all over the world and not only in western countries are entering a new time-age with full global competition. Globality describes business as “competing with everyone from everywhere for everything”.

According to The Boston Consulting Group western as well as emerging market companies will spread to other markets than their home markets. They will compete in areas beyond the areas of competition today.

Trend: Globality

Globality is both an opportunity and a threat to western firms. Companies from emerging economies will compete with them in their home markets as well as globally.

Furthermore the emerging markets with high middle class growth may become one of the must crucial economic battle grounds of this decade. This new segment will demand lover priced basic products, and emerging market firms already have experience in supplying this.

Accenture predicts that within 10 years one-third of the Fortune 500 companies will consist of emerging market companies (see graph for 2007 where it stood at 62 companies).

Case stories

Mexican Cemex has emerged as the worlds biggest player within building materials due to several big acquisitions world wide. The Cemex corporation became no. 1. in 2007 with the acquisition of Australia's Rinker Group putting it ahead of France's LaFarge.

Chinese Lenovo became the worlds third largest computer-maker when it acquired IBM’s computer division $1.75 billion in 2005. Today Lenovo is competing with Dell, HP, Acer and ASUS.

The Brazilian economy has accomplished to foster the largest bio-fuel program in the world based on the production of bioethanol from sugarcane. Brazil is a net exporter of bioethanol while the US is a net importer. The US and other countries ad tariffs to prevent cheap Brazilian ethanol from competing with home market ethanol.

Source: The Boston Consulting Group


Source: The Economist


What is it?

The 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), states that climate change is unequivocal and likely due to human derived greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Decision makers across the globe are taking measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

President Obama is preparing a shift towards reducing GHG emissions.

EU has agreed on the 20:20:20 plan on reducing CO2 emissions 20% and ensuring a 20% of renewable energies in EU energy consumption by 2020.

China’s government pushes for energy efficient production in “the 11th 5 year plan” with targets on decreasing energy consumption and polluted waste.

Trend: Climate change initiatives

Companies may deal with climate change in different ways:

1) Focus on solutions for mitigation 2) Focus on solutions for adaption 3) tackling the opportunities and risks it creates for the business, and 4) addressing the public perception of their footprints

Energy companies may embrace tighter GHG standards and invest in mitigation technologies such as carbon capture storage. Investments in renewable energy - wind, wave and solar - may also increase. Finally companies may also invest in the adaptiontechnologies handling the anticipated consequences of climate change e.g. flooding and extreme weather.

Case stories

Insurers of natural disasters such as Munich Re and Swiss Re aredeveloping new insurance based tools to cover the risk of countries and regions which are likely to be most affected by climate change. This includes increasingly volatile weather conditions like heatwaves, drought, and storms.

Oil majors like BP and Shell is also acknowledging climate change by reducing their GHG emissions, improving energy efficiency, and investing in new technology (such as CCS).

As part of its overall activities on Sustainability, Wal-Mart is implementing a Carbon Disclosure Project to measure the climate change impact across the whole supply chain.


Source: www.ipcc.ch and www.europa.eu

Source: www.unep.org

IPCC

What is it?

Trend: ‘Made in China’ to ‘Sold in China’

The Chinese market accounts for just over 1.3 billion consumers (2008), and Chinas urban population will expand from 572 million in 2005 to nearly one billion people in 2025. The Chinese middle class is now seen as a main economic driver with 650 million individuals in this group by 2020 from 79 million in 2004.

This change in demographics is causing China to change. Foreign companies are now focusing on how to supply services and products that can cover the increasing demand for energy, consumer goods, waste handling, insurance etc.

So where China a few years back was seen as a place for cost effective production of goods, it is now increasingly a huge consumer market with customers for both high end brands and mass market brands.

However China is also affected by the starting global recession, and the IMF now forecast a GDP growth at 5-6% in 2009. The growth hit 13% in 2007, and China is now bolstering the economy with a huge 586 billion dollar stimulus package.

China is anticipated to become the worlds biggest market place for consumer goods mainly based on the continuous growth of the Chinese middleclass. Targeting the Chinese market is a huge business opportunity for companies around the world.

However, China is also anticipated to foster strong companies which may become global players in a world of ‘globality’ where ‘everyone will compete everywhere for everything’, meaning that they will provide goods for their domestic market AND for foreign markets.

It is not only consumer goods that are anticipated to be sold in China. Within a few years China is anticipated to overhaul the USA as the worlds largest consumer of energy.

Case stories

China’s biggest automaker, BYD, has introduced the F3DM that uses BYD’s self-developed iron batteries, which can power the car to travel 100 miles on a charge. Other automakers are stuck with a 25-mile battery solution, but BYD is also the worlds biggest auto battery manufacturer. The car is charged via a 220wolt plug-in.

Bestseller, a Danish fashion company, is one the biggest foreignfashion retailers in China. They opened their first shop as pioneers back in 1996, and today Bestseller has more than 2.000 stores.

The first Wal-mart super center opend in China, in LuohuDistrict,Shenzhen in 1996. Today Wal-Mart has 77 Supercenters in China.


Source: Population Resource Center and McKinsey



What is it?

The Base of the Pyramid (BOP) is characterized as being the worlds fastest-growing new market.

The four billion people at the BoP living on less than $2 per day constitute a combined market worth over $5 trillion. These people can profitably be served as customers with many unmet needs and an increasing buying power.

BOP is a new business model. The basic business model within BOP is to develop low-cost strategies based on existing products or services. However firms are increasingly developing innovative business models that are growing new niche BoP markets.

Sub-Saharan Africa and other poor regions are to an increasing extent seen as potential markets instead of a place for donorship.

Multinational companies could change the way they do business indeveloping countries by interacting with poor people, serving them as consumers, and potentially fight poverty and make money.

Combating poverty by doing business requires being open to new kinds of partnerships. For example, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can successfully support business ventures with their market knowledge and distribution capacities. Successful BoP business models will often rely on collaboration with governments, NGOs, local communities and other stakeholders.

The poor countries and regions of today are the emerging, high-growth markets of tomorrow. Thus, the first-movers in BoP markets today, may end up being the most trusted companies in the emerging markets of the future.

Trend: Base of the Pyramid

Case stories

Vestergaard Frandsen has developed the LifeStraw®, a personal portable water purifier for prevention of the many water-borne diseases that kill millions of people in developing countries every year. LifeStraw® has been referred to as 'One of the Ten Things that will Change the Way We Live´ by Forbes Magazine. Vestergaard Frandsen strongly believes that business is for profit, but that profit must be for a purpose.

Carbon Manna is building a cell-phone-based carbon micro-credit system based on communication by SMS. The company has started out in Kenya where families are given the opportunity totrade in their old cooking stove for a more efficient solar cooker. More efficient cooking will help these families to make money byreleasing less CO2 and selling carbon credits to Carbon Manna, which will bundle and sell them on a world carbon exchange.

Source: C. K. Prahalad and UNDP

Source: Vestergaard Frandsen and Marketwire

Source: C. K. Prahalad UNDP


What is it?

Trend: Growing middle class in Asia

The global population rose by 1.2 pct. or total 70 million people in 2007. From 2008 to 2050, global population is projected to climb 40 pct. from 6.6 to 9.3 million.

The World Bank estimates that the middle class in developing nations will triple from 400 million(2007) to 1.2 billion by 2030. This forecast is based on the conservative definition that this middle class is living on $13-50 a day. With this definition the middle class will only make up 15 pct. In 2030.

Other organizations see the middle class in developing countries as those living of $2-13 a day, because two dollars a day is considered the poverty line. With this definition about 50 pct. of the world population is already in or above middle class level.

India’s and China’s middle class will together reach the one-billion mark by 2020 based on the middle class definition from The World Bank ($13-50)

The middle class in Asia may potentially gain more purchasing power and will crave access to more, better goods and services. As a result, the middle class will increase demand for better housing, healthcare, education, food, electricity and infrastructure.

Increasing demand could potentially put a strain on availability of food and many raw material dependent goods, which can drive prices upworldwide.

The growing middle class may cause a heavy increase in the demand for fuel, causing urban pollution to rise. This could influence businesses and government to invest more in sustainable energy solutions, causing India to leave its path of heavy oil-import dependency.

The global recession may bring emerging market middle-class growth to halt for a while – but not for long.

Case stories



Source: www.tatanano.com, www.ifpri.org and UN

Source: Population Resource Center and The Economist

Indian Tata Motor has developed the Nano model to be sold for only 2500 USD. This is by far the cheapest car ever made, targeted towards India’s fast growing middle class.

Tata Motor is expecting that several hundred thousand Indians will drive a Nano in the near future. At the same time environmentalists are worried about a Nano-invasion and growing CO2 emissions. Additionally many cities already have harmful pollution levels.

Meat consumption vs. population in developing countries

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Population - actual and projection Meat consumption - actual and projection

Source: UN

What is it?

The carbon market is an attempt to adopt a market-based approach by implementing a carbon trading regime driving carbon-reducing industrial behavior. In 2008 ~4,9bn tons of CO2 equivalent was traded and the market turnover was ~92bnEURO.

The Kyoto protocol was agreed upon in 1997 and outlined the system for the ‘Flexible mechanisms’ including the clean development mechanism and Joint implementation. These allow the Kyoto countries to invest in CO2 reducing projects in developing countries to offset their CO2 emissions.

Under the Kyoto protocol the EU launched the worlds first and biggest carbon trading system (ETS) in January 2005. It includes a cap-n-trade system where energy heavy industry in Europe has caps on the level of CO2 emissions allowed. Besides the EU ETS, the Australian New South Wales Abatement Certificates and the voluntary Chicago Climate Exchanges constitutes the biggest markets.

The Obama administration may introduce a federal cap-n-trade system, which may potentially grow bigger than the EU ETS. Obama wants to invest $15 bn/year to develop new energy technologies based on government revenue from carbon allowances, that companies would buy would fund the cap and trade system.

The Kyoto protocol may be replaced by a more ambitious plan when it expires in 2012. It is currently discussed that the new protocol may include new sectors such as shipping and aviation, which were left outside Kyoto.

The industries currently capped under e.g. the EU ETS may experience even lower caps to further reduce carbon emissions.

Finally, the post-Kyoto trading regime may be extended to countries outside the current treaty (e.g. USA).

Trend: Sustainability and trading regimes

Case stories

The UN issued 3.9 million carbon credits February 2009, taking the total issued to 261.7 million.

Among the projects were destruction of the GHG HFC 23 in India receiving ~1.2M Certified Emission Reductions (CERs). Navin Fluorine International’s plant is expected to save 2.8M tons CO2e/year. Investors are Natixis, Sumitomo Corp., BHP Billiton Marketing, Mercuria Trading, Ineos Fluor and E.ON.

Also a large wind farm in India received the second biggest volume of credits, 860,000 CERs. Tamil Nadu Spinning Mills Association’s portfolio of wind farms intends to save the equivalent of 685,000 tonnes CO2e/year. The Swiss and Swedish branches of Carbon Asset Management invested in the project.

Meanwhile, a project that destroys the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide in Brazil was issued around 687,000 credits. Rhodia Energy Brazil owns the plant that it reckons will save 5.9M tonnes CO2e/year. Various companies from across the globe where named investors.


Source: www.europa.eu


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aralvaimozhy_station.jpg

What is it?

Trend: Sustainable cities

Most of the worlds energy is used in cities where demand for fossil fuels for transportation, electricity and heating is high.

With the growing population in particularly China it is anticipated that the country will need to build 221 cities with more than one million residents by 2025 (against 35 in Europe today).

This urbanization and the demand for higher standards of living, push us to rethink how cities can recycle their waste and water, and use energy and resources efficiently. Climate change concerns also call for new ways to power these cities and handle the vital flows in them.

There are currently several ambitious green field sustainable city projects planned or in the making among others in the USA, Abu Dhabi and China .

Governments may start collaborating with business’ and NGO’s on how to design a way to secure people’s need in a sustainable manner. The goals for new eco-cities go towards a near zero emission strategy, why it is not possible to retrofit 100% sustainable solutions to current cities. The new mega cities may therefore have to be green field setups.

Rethinking green field cities opens up for new technologies in the area of e.g. waste and water treatment, sustainable and energy efficient building materials, energy efficiency and sustainable infrastructure. The potential outcome may be changed city flow systems toward 100% water recycling, zero energy houses, clean energy production, etc.

Case stories

The sustainable city of Masdar in Abu Dhabi is expected to be completed in 2016. By then 30,000 wealthy emirates will live in this near zero carbon emissions sustainable city. The population will be transported by electric vehicles on fixed paths, solar power plants will provide electricity, and the city will be desalinate ocean water.

Tianjin Eco-City is a new city being built 40 km from the existing city of Tianjin, and the city focus is on wind and solar energy together with water recycling. The construction started in late 2008, and the setup is a joint-venture between China and Singapore. The Singapore consortium is led by Keppel Corporation.

The Tianjin Eco-City has not adopted a “Zero CO2 emissions” strategy, but the project have great prospects because the Chinese government see it as a model for the many new cities it has to built.


Source: Scientific American

Source: masdaruae.com and http://www.tianjinecocity.gov.sg/

Source: sustainablecities.dk and McKinsey Global Institute

The sustainable city of Treasure Island, San Francisco, USA

Solar, wind and desalination are key initiatives in the UAE


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1c/Treasure_Island_Development.jpg


What is it?

Social innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and business models that addresses the social sphere of a company, its products, its customers and other stakeholders. It takes it offset in the belief that business is not only about markets and technology development, but also has a social dimension.

The term has developed three key overlapping meanings over the years. It can be used to refer to social processes of innovation, such as open- and employee-driven innovation, innovation that serves a social need in society, and thirdly societal impact on business innovation.

The concept of social innovation must always relate to interaction with the society including perception, beliefs, policies and regulation around a business.

Trend: Social Innovation

Companies success may potentially depend on their proactive focus on social innovation and not exclusively on product- and technological innovation.

The future of innovation may well lie within open innovation, public affairs, interaction with society, perception and values.

Companies could also successfully co-operate with NGO’s to reach the market opportunities in social innovation. The NGO’s possess knowledge, local infrastructure and relationships, which all can serve as key value drivers for corporations working with social innovation.

Case stories

Source: Novozymes Blue Marble

One of the biggest challenges of our time is the need for renewable and sustainable energy. Biofuels constitute a small but increasingly growing part of the global energy supply, and by 2010 Novozymes will be able to supply enzymes to produce second-generation bio-ethanol that converts waste and agricultural residues into energy. This will be a radical development in the search for new renewable energy sources.

Novozymes has developed a cold water detergent enzyme that can help people lower their electricity bill. The company Danlind is using Novozymes’ technology in their Care cold water detergent, which can reduce the washing temperature from 60 to 30 degrees or even lower it to 20. This detergent product helps reducing CO2 emissions.

Source: Novozymes


What is it?

Trend: Do It Yourself Biology

Do It Yourself Biology (DIY Bio) is seen as a democratization ofscience where hobbyists are doing biological work outside of traditional professional settings. In the 90s open source within personal computers lead to a fast tracked development of the technology. The DIY Bio is seen as the same kind of open source, but in an other technology field.

Biological advances are most commonly done by business and academia which are focused on patents that protect their findings. DIY Bio is a crowd-sourced way for hobbyists to help measure, characterize and develop new biotechnological solutions.

The philosophy is that DIY-biology can create added value to scientific research and development. It is meant to inspire citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and bioengineers to organize and collaborate on biological projects outside of traditional professional settings.

DIY Bio may lead to the development of new vaccines, new ways oftreating disease, and efficient biofuels. Governments and research institutes may embrace this development by creating publicly accessible laboratories for individuals and amateurs outside theprofessional world.

However many experts are warning that a DIY bio movement may potentially cause more harm than good. The danger lies in the fact that genes, organisms, and bacteria's in the hands amateurs could escape and cause outbreaks of deadly diseases or unpredictable environmental damage. Governments may support DIY bio by ensuring some kind of oversight and monitoring.

Case stories

In the US DIY bio inspired scientist Meredith Patterson is heading an open-source group working on creating a simple ingredient that can make milk products turn green, if it comes in touch with harmfulmelamine. Melamine-tainted milk is blamed for the deaths of six children in China and making another 290,000 people sick, and the goal is to come up with a more cost-efficient solution than the ones used in commercial testing today.

The UK government are not taxing biofuel productions up to 2,500liters, which have created an increasing market for DIY initiatives. This has created a market for turning vegetable cooking oils into biodiesel and it both makes economic and environmental sense. In the UK a group of people is investing in a micro-biofuel production setup, and additionally the diesel engine need a small configuration of £500-£1000. The cost is offset in a few months.


Source: openwetware.org and bbc.co.uk

Source: www.mit.edu and www.diybio.org

Source: scienceblogs.com, etc.


http://farm1.static.flickr.com/249/444102323_d6bfcaab4a.jpg?v=0

What is it?

Trend: Green retailing

Retailers are now responding to the increasingly active green consumer segment by changing towards more sustainability. The motivation for becoming a green retailer varies, from political and economic to social and strategic reasons, but in general green retailers wants to be recognized as a company caring about our planets future.

The retail industry is also starting to acknowledge that it can use green marketing to boost sales, and together with their suppliers they seek to lower costs by using recycled materials in packaging, less water in production, less energy, and to recycle waste.

The EU Packaging Directive effectively promotes energy recovery, re-use and recycling of packaging. Waste recycling also helps retailers lower their costs. According to the Carbon Trust, UK retailing accounts for only 7% of UK CO2 emissions, but the industry should easily be able to cut emissions by 10%.

The retail industry may potentially increase pressure on suppliers to meet the green standards within energy, materials, ingredients and water use. At the same time retailers could experience increasing pressure from the green consumer segment.

The retail industry may chose to adopt green Lean Thinking as an approach to achieve sustainability by reducing waste, consumption and costs.

Potentially, consumers could get insight into product lifecycles including green logistics, less packaging, better waste and recycling handling, less refrigerated food products, etc. Additionally consumer push could drive towards organic or low-carbon friendly products.

New regulation may push the industry to recycle materials and waste water at a much higher level than previously seen.

Case stories

Marks & Spencer launched a five-year sustainability plan in 2007. M&S is using 200 million pounds until 2012 to combat climate change, reduce waste, safeguard natural resources and trade ethically. The aim and overall goal is also to reduce costs and increase profits.

Ikea is building sustainable and eco-efficient superstores in Australia using the latest technologies available. The stores’ air-conditioning only runs during the night when electricity is cheap, during the day it then pumps the cooled water through panels. The toilet water comes from rainwater that is heated using solar panels. Ikea is experiencing 20 pct. lower costs in energy consumption compared to conventional stores.

Whole Foods Market is offsetting 100% of its energy use by buying renewable-energy credits, converting its truck fleet to biofuel, composts its food waste, and maintains recycling programs for old consumer electronic products.


Source: Marks & Spencer Plan A and ceres.org


Source: communications.lab and retailresearch.org

Source: Green Retail 2009 Conference


What is it?

‘Life on the Go’ is the trend of the increasing number of people consuming food, drinks, snacks in the train, in the car, on the street, etc.

In addition the number of people living alone is rising. It is categorized as ‘the singles economy’ and addressed as a specific consumer segment. This group demands smaller size portions and easy to make food.

Based on the two movements there is an increasing demand for goods and services that can enhance our everyday life effectiveness, e.g. prepared food and drinks in small pack sizes and for ‘on the go’ consumption.

Trend: Life on the Go

In the future we may see increased demand for healthy food, drinks and snack products for consumption on the go and/or in smaller and often prepared portions. This may put increased focus on food safety and shelf-life of these products.

In a carbon constrained world this development may also increasethe demand for sustainable packaging and for sensible ways of handling the increased waste from packaged food.

Moreover there may be increased focus on the demand for functional packaging to deal with packaging for fresh or prepared food and drinks.

This trend may open business opportunities in functional packaging, sustainable packaging and waste handling of packaging materials.

Case stories

Australian Barokes ‘Wine in a can’ is a world-patent product appealing to the convenience society. This wine in a can is easy to consume and the can is designed to prolong the wine taste known from conventional wine bottles.

UK founded Pret a Manger started in 1986 with a concept of fresh food and drinks using natural, preservative-free ingredients for the consumer on the go. All meals and snacks are fresh and packed – ready to go. Today there 190 Pret a Manger shops mainly in the UK.

Source: Basic American Foods


What is it?

A number of raw materials, (water, oil, metals, crops, etc.) arebecoming more scarce, as a result of long-run increased demand and decreased accessibility. The long-run increasing demand is driven largely by growing economies.

In the future many raw materials will join the list of inputs with diminishing availability, and several of these raw materials have huge cost to the environment. Other raw materials such as rubberare to be recycled.

Already used raw materials are often treated simply as waste, which is costly for the environment. Yet the value can be recaptured to generate new value, while sustaining our planet. Not reusing raw materials and garbage is a waste of resources, and intelligent waste management makes lowers GHG emissions.

Trend: Value from waste

Scarcity could first of all lead to increasing prices of raw materials in the long-run. Higher raw material prices may demand more efficient use of raw materials in manufacturing, and in product life cycles. In addition waste management firms will be motivated to increase there sorting and recycling within all waste categories.

Manufacturers may look to minimize raw material usage through material substitution, and consumers could demand retailers to press their suppliers to recycle and re-use all possible materials.

Companies that can supply services and products for lowering theexpenses for sorting waste for recycling, may potentially meet huge business opportunities in the future.

Case stories

Norcal Waste Systems effectively handles most of San Francisco city’s household garbage by constantly striving to recycle more by improving processes. At its best, Norcal recycles almost 70 pct. of municipal garbage in San Francisco, which is one of the highest rates in the world.

The goal is to achieve ‘zero waste’, but currently metals are the only materials that are constantly profitable to sort and categorize for reselling and recycling. Cardbord is often also profitable, but other non-profitable materials include plastic and paper.

The economic shortfall is covered by Norcal’s customers, who pay $25 a month for waste disposal service. To achieve ‘zero’ waste’they must pay more to offset the costs of more manual sorting.


Source: www.recyclemach.com


Source: The Economist

Steel scrap ready for recycling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Steel_recycling_bales.jpg


What is it?

The production of chemicals has significantly increased since the 1930’s, and today chemicals are an integrated part of most consumer goods e.g. in foods, textiles, toys, and cars.

Regulation on chemicals has in most cases been implemented on a reactive basis several years after a specific problem has been seen using the chemical. It now covers many dimensions from the safety of the individual chemicals and their mixtures to the uses and processes they are implemented in.

In view of the slow implementation of new regulation, new (semi)voluntary initiatives are appearing e.g. various environmental labels (EU flower, SWAN label) and individual companies requiring specific documentation of the level of dangerous chemicals in the products received from their suppliers.

Trend: Enzymes are sustainable chemicals!

Case stories

In general the retailers are placed in an optimum spot in the value chain for the collection of input from the consumers on needs and new trends.

Marks & Spencer has developed an entire range of household products without synthetic chemicals. Grime and dirt are now removed withnatural cleaning agents.

Wal-Mart looks at every facet of their business—from the products they offer to the energy they use—through the lens of sustainability. Wal-Mart’s environmental goals are to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; to create zero waste; and to sell products that sustain our natural resources and the environment.


While the increasing regulatory demands might be seen as negatively by some parts of industry, other more innovative businesses may see this an opportunity for finding new sustainable ways of obtaining the same product functionalities, substituting chemicals. These frontrunners may also take the time to produce the extensive documentation required for demonstrating that the products are sustainable.

Most general regulation categorizes enzymes as chemicals, so Novozymes too is currently dealing with regulatory demands in e.g. the choices of stabilizers for the finished enzyme granulates/liquid formulations. However, alongside our existing sustainability story line around e.g. CO2, with the increasing regulatory legislation, NZ might have the opportunity of promoting other sustainable elements of enzymes e.g. degradability in the environment, and if compared to the more harsh chemical being regulated may also have a lighter toxicity profile towards humans.

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Source: Marks & Spencer and www.onderzoekinformatie.nl

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