Cutting Fluid’s Impact on Reducing Carbon Footprint

Is cutting fluid the key to carbon footprint reduction in manufacturing? Improving sustainability in manufacturing has been a major undertaking for the past decade, not only for overall waste and pollution reduction but, increasingly, to achieve carbon footprint reduction goals.

But some changes don’t require a massive undertaking across your organization. Something as simple as a change in cutting fluid can make a huge impact. As a foundational element of metalworking operations, sustainable and well-maintained cutting fluid can be instrumental in hitting emissions targets.

That said, carbon reduction efforts require a long-term strategy and involve many moving parts. As your organization leans into more sustainability efforts, prepare to face issues with:

• Budget constraints. Manufacturers will need to strategically prioritize the changes they make. Carbon removal technologies and strategies can have a high upfront cost, so budgeting needs to be carefully planned.
• Tracking carbon reduction. Monitoring carbon reduction efforts adds complexity to supply chains. Each stakeholder has to make emission and sustainability improvements while working with suppliers that are trying to implement the same solutions.
• Keeping the big picture in mind. Hitting the greenhouse gas emission metrics requires eco-friendly materials, renewable fuel sources, ethical suppliers and more. This also means paying special attention to the social, economical and ecological pillars of sustainability. Staying up to date on changing regulations (and keeping up with them) is an ongoing challenge. It’s important to focus on the parts of your operation you can control.

Manufacturers should consider laying a sustainable foundation with cutting fluid. When people think of investing in sustainability, they often imagine solar panels, advanced machinery and the newest, most exciting (often, most expensive) technology. But this kind of thinking overlooks more manageable investments that can still have a major impact such as cutting fluid.

As the unsung workhorse of every metalworking shop, cutting fluid touches every aspect of production. The right fluid for your operation, when maintained for optimal performance, can dramatically improve throughput, part quality, labor utilization and other efficiency gains for incredible cost savings. More importantly, you can achieve similar breakthroughs in carbon reduction throughout your facility when you optimize cutting fluid for sustainability.

So how can cutting fluid cut carbon emissions? Cutting fluid plays both a direct and indirect role in many sustainability initiatives, reducing the amount of petrochemicals used in an operation and improving efficiency so you burn less fossil fuels. Some of the biggest ways cutting fluid impacts carbon emissions are:

• Eco-friendly formulations. In the past decade, developments in chemical manufacturing have introduced new neo-synthetic classes of cutting fluids that are petroleum free and use bio-based ingredients, making them more sustainable and environmentally friendly. These updated formulations can outperform traditional petro-based cutting fluids and have passed rigorous testing to meet new sustainability requirements. Cutting fluid that is both more efficient and more sustainable creates a new paradigm in which sustainable materials are objectively better investments from both a business and operational standpoint.
• Waste reduction. Even when manufacturers use traditional, petro-based cutting fluids, optimizing their performance extends sump life and dramatically reduces consumption. This translates to carbon reduction throughout the supply chain, delaying the need for suppliers to manufacture replacement fluid and reducing emissions from less frequent fluid disposal.
• Investment reallocation. Depending on the size of an operation, the right cutting fluid investment can significantly cut overall operating costs. Implementing cutting fluid recycling systems, for instance, reduces how often you must buy new fluid to top off your machines. A small change like this frees capital to invest in even more sustainability and carbon footprint reduction solutions. This puts companies at an incredible competitive advantage: The faster they decarbonize, the more they stand out in the marketplace, avoid regulatory risk and stand to generate ROI on their sustainability investments.

Cutting fluid has always been the foundation for an efficient and cost-effective manufacturing operation. This makes cutting fluid an ideal place to start looking when it’s time to reduce emissions or improve sustainability. The companies that have already optimized their coolant strategy are not only saving money but also have the potential to build the zero-emissions future. Fortunately, there’s both time and demand for the rest of the industry to catch up.