Eco Repair Score NV and VITO have developed the Eco Repair Score® to assess the environmental impact of a specific car repair job. It does this using a single score, with categories from A to E and associated colour coding.
Blue Plastics technology, called CleanBlueTech, is a pioneering, solvent-based, closed-loop washing technology that removes smell, glue, print-ink and organic residues from any plastic flexible film waste.
CleanBlueTech is a game changer as it uses 70% less energy and 100% less water than existing technologies.
Tarkett has developed a technology at its Dutch Waalwijk carpet production facility enabling the separation of the two principal components of carpet tiles. Its recycling centre creates two streams of materials that can be recycled and transformed into high-quality resources for new products.
The slow flower movement is growing in Europe and aims to provide local, seasonal and organic flowers. Why? Because the international flower industry is very harmful to nature and has major negative impacts in developing countries.
This white paper on Quick Scan Circular Business Models - Inspiration for organising value retention in loops from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy offers an approach for developing a circular business model. It is based on a classification for existing and future circular business models developed in 2021. It consists of seven basic models geared primarily to the manufacturing industry, although it can also be used in other sectors.
The paper is divided into three parts:
an introduction explaining the background and central concepts
an overview of the seven circular business models comprising the classification, and
the actual Quick Scan.
The interactive Quick Scan version can be found here.
The zero waste consultancy wegozero has mapped more than 1000 businesses with zero waste potential in four European cities. Its maps are available for a monthly subscription and aim to tell people which businesses in their city are sustainable and geared to circular thinking.
The Federal Council for Sustainable Development Belgium has issued a formal response to the Federal Belgian Action Plan on the Circular Economy. The council addressed issues regarding the substance and procedure of the action plan.
Procedural issues include the vagueness of the plan's exact intentions and deadlines as well as the lack of a better governance mechanism. Substantive issues include:
more focus needed on the social challenges associated with the introduction of a circular economy
more focus on the impact on the climate of increasing digitalisation
recycling of critical metals, and
importance of removing all known barriers (regulatory, fiscal, financial, etc.) to the circular transition.
