SAVVIER: Silicates & Aluminosilicates: Visibility for Value-chain Innovation & Environmental Responsibility

The SAVVIER project aims to help UK materials and manufacturing organisations become more competitive and fit for the future by helping them work together in efficient and cooperative supply chains. In our vision for the future, the wastes or by-products of one industrial partner in a supply chain become the material inputs for another partner. These 'secondary materials' are reused as replacements for virgin raw materials (e.g. sourced from the extraction of earth resources). Material users see benefits as they do not have to source and import virgin materials, while material suppliers avoid the problem of disposing of their wastes or by-products. This collaborative approach -- known as Industrial Symbiosis -- also provides a great opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution from wastes, as resources are maintained in use for longer.

The SAVVIER project partners aim to show the feasibility of using a digital platform and supply chain mapping and assessment methods to help establish collaborative UK supply chains for the supply, processing and use of waste-derived materials. The project will focus on silicate and aluminosilicate materials. Silicates (i.e. materials that contain a metal ion, silicon and oxygen) and aluminosilicates (that additionally contain aluminium ions) are important inorganic materials used in multiple applications, including laundry detergents, paper and card, adhesives, cements, tyres, desiccants (including cat litter) and as catalysts for many industrial processes.

The project will use a real industrial challenge (replacement of silicates and aluminosilicates in dry laundry powers) as a focus for the project.