The Prosperkolleg project started in the German city of Bottrop on 1 June 2019, aiming to explore how to transfer the idea of the circular economy to industry.
Hochschule Ruhr West, WiN Emscher-Lippe GmbH, the city of Bottrop, the Effizienzagentur NRW and the Prosperkolleg association all joined forces to carry out research and demonstrate innovative developments in circular products and business models.
The project is funded by the Ministry of the Economy, Innovation, Digitalisation and Energy of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Plastic Atlas contains more than 49 detailed infographics covering a broad range of topics regarding the plastic pollution crisis looking along the entire value chain of plastic. The atlas highlights the scale of the crisis, and the global impacts of plastic production, consumption and disposal on other key global challenges such as human health and climate change. It also outlines the role of plastic for key industrial sectors such as agriculture and tourism and describes the corporate interests and drivers behind the plastic crisis. Finally, the Plastic Atlas presents an overview of key plastic-free regulations, zero waste solutions and a snapshot of the growing global movement working towards a future free from plastic pollution.
To create a circular economy for Flexible Intermediate Bulk Containers, Starlinger, a plastic packaging machinery and process technology engineering company from Austria, has simulated a closed loop for polypropylene - the main component of big bags- in cooperation with renowned big bag manufacturers Louis Blockx and LC Packaging.
RePack is the easiest way to implement circular economy in eCommerce. Using reusable and returnable RePack packaging service means sustainability in every package.
The reusable RePack bags are and made of durable and recycled materials and come in three adjustable sizes. They replace single-use packaging as the customer chooses RePack as the mean of package for delivery.
With funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Circular Economy Initiative Deutschland (CEID) was initiated in 2019.
In three working groups on Circular Business Models, Traction Batteries and Packaging, 130 experts from more than 50 institutions from science, industry, politics and civil society discussed how to enable and establish circular economic systems.
Recommendations were summarised in the Circular Economy Roadmap for Germany. The roadmap was published on 11 May 2021 and officially handed over to the BMBF.
Given the growing demand for electric vehicles, CEID is currently engaged in the Battery Pass project. This focuses on the sustainable production, use and recycling of lithium-ion batteries and the digital battery passport.
This preliminary study stimulates public debate on the circular economy in Germany and serves as a basis for discussion within the recently launched Circular Economy Initiative Deutschland. With a sizeable industry, there is substantial opportunity for Germany to adopt circular policies, but this paradigm shift would mean no less than a reinterpretation of the "Made in Germany" model.
In the past years, both the European Union and several Member States have adopted circular economy strategies to transition to a resource-efficient economy based on keeping resources in use for longer. While countries outside Europe also follow this guiding principle in their industrial and resource policies, e.g. China, Japan or Canada, such a plan is still missing in Germany.
plastship, successfully launched in May 2019, is a German digital startup that has created a trading and service platform for buyers and sellers of regrinds, re-granulates and recyclates.
This study delivers the first empirical findings on the relevance of digitisation to improving material efficiency based on the German company survey ‘IW-Zukunftspanel’.
German manufacturing firms have up to now only rarely digitised material efficiency measures to a great extent. If they are - particularly in large companies - they tend to be used for process optimisation. Around two fifths of the companies are at least moderately digitised in relation to the most important industrial efficiency measures, namely process optimisation and the use of new techniques, but there is still more than a third that is not at all. Companies have most frequently digitised cross-company materials cycles, but this instrument is only applied by two fifths of industrial companies.
Flustix is a certification body for plastic-free and partially plastic-free products as well as goods made from recycled and recyclable plastics. By making plastic reduction clearly visible for customers, the certification provides guidance and the opportunity to make a plastic-aware buying decision.
