Run On Leftovers
Run a second process only on what the first leaves behind, so the first can keep going; when the first stalls, you have found the rate.
Formerly Sink
Kalundborg: one plant’s waste heat warms the town.
Seen in Markus and Daniel Freitag, FREITAG bags, Zurich, 1993 on
Try it on your work
Identify what the thing you're working on throws off: offcuts, drafts, scraps, heat, noise. Start a second, separate piece of work that uses only that. Stop when the first process stalls because the second has consumed its output; that stall tells you the rate.
Keep every sentence you cut from the project in a separate file. Write something else using only cut sentences. Stop when the second text needs a sentence the first has not yet cut.
Find one thing your process discards that another person or process could use, and route it there without asking for anything back. Stop when the other side depends on it; then you have a system, not a favour.
How it has been used
At Kalundborg in Denmark, companies exchange streams that would otherwise be waste. Steam, water, heat and industrial by-products from one process become resources for another, allowing production to continue while reducing disposal and extraction. The symbiosis did not begin as a single master plan; useful links accumulated as organisations noticed that one participant’s remainder could be another’s input.
Where it leads
Grouped under Help the parts work together