sustainable carpentry

More and more companies are outsourcing large parts of their “value chain”, metal carpentry is one of them.

Can metal carpentry be sustainable?

Certainly, sustainability and environmental responsibility have become central aspects also in the metal carpentry industry. Companies are adopting a series of measures, from the use of renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic to guarantee low impact production processes, to the use of eco-compatible materials, to attention to recycling practices to minimize waste waste and attention in waste management.

Another fundamental aspect is innovation: having a fleet of machines with advanced technology allows you to reduce consumption and optimize material and times. The use of data and management software interconnected with machinery in industry 4.0 allows you to better manage production and predict or identify faults or malfunctions. Even the entire order management process that optimizes times and processes is an advantage of the sustainability and efficiency of the entire supply chain.

Sustainability, in fact, must be taken into consideration throughout the entire life cycle of the product. LCA "Life Cycle Assessment" means the methodology that analyzes the entire life cycle of artefacts considering all flows of energy and matter consumed by the product, "from the cradle to the grave". Already in the design phase, all actions can be programmed to reduce assembly times and minimize transport. All variables that reduce its environmental impact.

Taking into consideration the product transformation phase, the circular economy for metal carpentry is expressed in two macro areas:

1. the management of incoming materials

2. waste management during processing

1. All steel and aluminum purchased from the manufacturer or distributors must be of certified origin with CE marking and accompanied, where required, by clear environmental product declarations, also correlated with calculation reports of the scrap content in the product or by innovative technologies that use hydrogen instead of coal for the iron ore reduction process, emitting water instead of CO2.

2. The transformation of the aforementioned products into finished elements within the factories of a metal carpentry is particularly virtuous, as it gives rise to a reduced quantity of waste materials, the majority of which is reintroduced into the intended cycle to recovery.

Steel and aluminum are materials with a low carbon content and can be recycled an infinite number of times without any degradation of the product.

They also respond to the key principles of the Circular Economy:

- compared to other materials, a minimal quantity is required to provide the desired function

- are produced in an environmentally and energetically sustainable manner, i.e. with a low impact on the life cycle, as determined by the specifications for the individual products;

- With regard to the entire useful life cycle of the works, anti-corrosion treatments ensure considerable durability of the properties, reducing the frequency of maintenance to a minimum.

Since durability depends on the anti-corrosion method applied, it is of fundamental importance to know the LCA data for the global evaluation of its sustainability throughout the useful life of the works.

The steel protection activity involves relative environmental and energy loads, but the increase in durability obtained allows the resulting total loads to be distributed over the entire useful life, globally and also incrementally improving the sustainability of the product or infrastructure in question. terms of global emissions without the need for extraordinary maintenance.

The F.X.T. S.p.A. is very attentive to the issue of sustainability and collaborates with other companies in creating machinery used in circular economy projects. Like the one created by UNION S.p.A. for cleaning and reusing elastene fibres.