CITEO is organising a conference (in English) on From innovation to consumption: how new practices accelerate the circular economy in connection with EU Green Week. Green Week highlights initiatives and solutions to meet environmental challenges, and this year is being held under the banner "Green Deal: Make it real", as it focuses on the delivery of the European Green Deal. The conference will take place in person only in Brussels on 31 May from 16:30 to 18:00 CEST.

Draft agenda:

• Introduction by Jean Hornain, Director General of CITEO, and a representative of Zero Waste Europe
• Presentation of Citeo: French EPR for packaging by Jean Hornain
• Presentation of the European perspective concerning packaging innovation and how the EU can respond to consumer expectations to buy more sustainable packaging by Joan Marc Simon, Executive Director of Zero Waste Europe
• Presentation of the two round tables by Kira Taylor, moderator, from Euractiv
• Presentation of CITEO's Circular Challenge: an accelerator for the circular economy which aims to provide long-term support for prevention, eco-design, sorting, collection, reuse and recycling projects in the household packaging and paper value chain, by Jean Hornain.

First round table:

• Material innovation as a tool to fight plastic pollution in response to consumer expectations:
  • one start-up from Circular Challenge which wants to move up to the European level: Esa Torniaine, Chief Business Development Officer and Co-Founder of Paptic, will explain how this start-up is innovative, the market in which it operates and how the particular innovation influences consumer purchasing practices.
  • Jean-Pierre Schweitzer (Policy officer for products and circular economy) from the European Environment Bureau, will address the issue of littering with a focus on packaging innovations as an alternative to virgin materials and an incentive towards circularity.
  • Florian Marin from the EESC will present civil society's expectations for more sustainable consumption and the EESC's work on this topic. He will seek to answer the following questions: is material innovation a solution to plastic pollution? How can material innovation influence consumers' behaviour?

Q/A (5 minutes) from the audience to the panel.

Second round table:

• Innov-action: how reuse innovations induce change in consumer practices:
  • one start-up from Circular Challenge: Arnaud Lancelot, co-founder of Cozie, will talk about reuse systems for cosmetics.
  • one stakeholder representing consumers will share their vision of how to persuade consumers to opt for reuse innovations.
  • Clarissa Morawski, Chief Executive Officer of the Reloop platform, will share her vision of how innovations in reuse can help change consumers' behaviour and how Reloop expects European policies to develop the circular economy.

Q/A (5 minutes) from the audience to the panel.

Jean Hornain and Joan Marc Simon will conclude the conference, after which participants will be invited to join them for a drink.