Remaking Scotland a Waste-Free Economy

Funding has been announced for nine Scottish projects designed to make things as good as new—or even better. The cash is from the Scottish Institute for Remanufacture, supported by the Scottish government, to create a waste-free, “circular” economy, BBC reported. Remanufacturing is a process that takes old but high-value products and restores them to an as-new condition. In some cases, they are even better than when they were new. Design flaws can be engineered out to make them better than they were in the first place. The bottom line is that, compared to Scotland’s remanufacturing sector, the Wombles are amateurs. That’s because making good use of the things that they find—the things that the everyday folks leave behind—but remanufacturing goes further. It is more than recycling or upcycling, more even than refurbishing. Certainly more than giving something a quick polish and selling it cut price as B-grade stock. A remanufacturer will go back to the absolute basics.