Driving demand for sustainable materials: A sustainable net zero way of living needs carbon neutral products

Carbon neutral products can only be a produced in decarbonised supply chains, with reliable availability of low carbon materials, designed for each product application and for product and material re-use.

Policy can help drive ambitious innovation.

New policies to create markets for low-carbon basic materials are badly needed to incentivise innovation that is still required to decarbonise virgin basic materials production. To be effective, these policies will need to address all stages of the industrial production value chain, including incentivising innovation and facilitating market diffusion through increased demand downstream.

But as, if not more, important, market-pull and supply chain collaboration is also vital to initiate transformation.

Commitment from key end users will create a significant shift in demand for sustainable products and materials. This will drive the supply chain to decarbonise through specification and procurement of innovative low-carbon materials, both incentivising market transformation and ensuring that any new innovations have a ready market for deployment.

I will present case studies from world leading UK supply chains, demonstrating the transformative impact that matching policy pushes and market pulls can create for sustainable manufacturing with wide ranging applicability across all of the foundation industries and manufacturing sectors.