The environmental and economic savings are impressive. It expects to increase this share to 84 percent once a new copier series, designed for easy disassembly, is placed into service. Xerox estimates that its remanufacturing program diverted 30,000 tons from landfills in 1997 alone. Interface reports that landfilled factory wastes have been cut by 60 percent since 1995, and expects even greater savings from additional changes. The company achieved a 20 percent jump in sales and posted record sales between 1995 and 1996 - with virtually no increase in materials use.
Some companies minimize waste by selling it to other companies that use it for their own production.
Whole clusters of industries are set up in this way, each linked by the waste flows of member firms. In Kalundborg, Denmark, a power plant, a cement factory, a farm, and several other industries share their wastes, an arrangement that diverts more than 1.3 million tons of waste from landfills or oceans each year. Similarly, in Fiji, a brewery, a mushroom farm, a chicken-raising farm, and a fish farm are tied together through flows of organic waste. A few far-sighted governments have promoted more intelligent use of materials. In Germany, an ordinance adopted in the early 1990s holds producers responsible for nearly all the packaging waste they generate.