Edinburgh tech firm embarks on project to help businesses profit from waste

An Edinburgh-based data analytics specialist has embarked on a joint venture project to help businesses profit from waste.

Topolytics has teamed up with the Centre of Engineering Education and Development (CeeD) to enable manufacturers to get a better understanding of their waste and its associated carbon impact. The project is being funded by Innovate UK, the innovation agency.

Currently some 60 per cent of the waste from cities globally is going to landfill, a waste dump or leaking into the environment.

It is hoped that the Edinburgh firm’s WasteMap analytics platform will provide companies with greater scrutiny over their waste and by-products, leading to cost and resource efficiencies and reductions in carbon emissions.

Mike Groves, CEO, Topolytics: 'Delighted to join up with CeeD and Innovate UK on its ‘smart manufacturing’ challenge'. Picture: Claire Watson Photography

Mike Groves, chief executive of Topolytics, said the venture would address the “smart manufacturing” challenge.

“Many organisations globally are asking the question ‘what happens to my waste?’. They are doing this to identify greater operational efficiencies, a desire to recover and re-use material and greater legal scrutiny,” he added.

“However, more still needs to be done and we are seeing demand internationally for a systematic, data driven approach across many organisations and many countries to address the waste challenge at scale.”

Joe Pacitti, managing director at the CeeD, said: “The aim of this collaboration is to help organisations gain a much greater insight into what happens to their waste, where it goes, how far it travels, how they can generate efficiencies, reduce associated carbon emissions and enhance reporting.

“Topolytics, a CeeD member, is acknowledged as a leader in the £2 billion global ‘wastetech’ sector through its work with waste producers, the waste industry and governments. The company is aggregating and analysing data at scale, to make the world’s waste more visible, to make the data more verifiable and unlock value for those organisations creating and processing this material.”

He added: “The waste industry and the waste system has not traditionally been the domain of sophisticated data collection and analysis systems, but if we are to move to a more circular economy this has to change.

“Data for engineering and manufacturing companies is one of our key future challenges.”

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