Ms Ettinger is a lawyer in Germany and holds a Master of Law degree from George Mason University (USA). Before joining EuRIC, she worked at a Brussels-based consultancy, advising multinational companies on environmental, health and safety matters.
EuRIC is a confederation which represents the interests of European recycling industries within the EU. It spans the majority of waste streams, and so can facilitate cooperation between national recycling and resource management federations and companies from over 23 European countries, operating both locally and globally.
EuRIC represents:
5 500+ companies generating an aggregated annual turnover of about €95 billion, including large companies and SMEs involved in the recycling of and trade in various resource streams
300 000 local jobs which cannot be outsourced to non-EU countries
a million tons of waste recycled each year (metals, paper, glass, plastics, WEEE, ELVs, tyres, textiles, construction & demolition, etc.).
By turning waste into resources, recycling loops recycled materials back into value chains. Recyclers play a key role in bridging resource efficiency, climate change policy and the industrial transition.
Bioremediation, the process of using living organisms to break down environmental pollutants, has real potential for the circular economy. It could help address environmental pollution while promoting resource recovery and sustainability.
The process also supports more circular use of resources, minimises waste generation and reduces the need for resource extraction.
On 12 September, the ECESP Leadership Group on Bioeconomy will bring together an expert panel to discuss ways to clean up the environment using this nature-based solution and achieve zero-pollution. Participants will learn how to reduce microplastics and pharmaceutics contamination in the soil and water.
Our experts will present innovative bioremediation solutions and how to implement them sustainably.
Raw materials are crucial to Europe's economy, and sustainable access to these materials is key for net zero objectives. However, Europe relies heavily on imports, mostly from third-country suppliers. It needs to mitigate supply chain risk arising from this strategic dependency in order to enhance its economic resilience.
The ECESP Leadership Group on Critical Raw Materials is holding this #EUCircularTalks on 11 October to highlight opportunities to improve existing life cycles for products containing CRMs.
Join us and explore how EU policy can scale up improvement opportunities and overcome the obstacles to creating a more circular economy for products reliant upon CRMs.
Sofie works as a policy advisor for the international policy unit at OVAM, the Public Waste Agency of Flanders, which ensures that Flanders deals with waste, materials and soil in a well thought out and environmentally sound manner. Since 1981, OVAM has been developing a balanced mix of economic and regulatory instruments on waste, materials and soil that has made the Region of Flanders one of the frontrunners in Europe in this field.
We are joining forces with our partners in business, civil society, research and government to develop a circular economy, taking a multi-stakeholder participatory approach. Circular Flanders, which was initiated by OVAM, serves as hub, inspiration and matchmaker for the transition to a circular economy in Flanders. We implement measures that go beyond sorting and recycling waste to make a systemic shift from take-make-waste to a new economic model that factors in the scarcity of raw materials and the ecological limits of our planet.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is a UK charity which aims to speed up the transition to the circular economy. Since it was set up, the charity has emerged as a global thought leader, putting the circular economy on the agenda of decision makers across business, government and academia.
Carsten Wachholz joined the Foundation in 2020 after spending two years working for the European Investment Bank on Corporate Responsibility and another four years working for the European Environmental Bureau on the first EU Circular Economy Action Plan. Carsten leads the Foundation's newly established Brussels-based team supporting the development of circular economy policies at EU and international level (e.g. G20, OECD), in close collaboration with the Foundation's systemic initiatives on plastics, fashion and food.
Fashion for Change EU - with contributions from Michael Laermann and Arthur ten Wolde (Ecopreneur.eu), Mari Saar (Civitta), Maria Kristiin Peterson (EKA), and Justina Lizikevičiūtė- Grišinė (Katalista Ventures)
This Fashion for Change report illustrates the key business challenges and needs for circular fashion designers, start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises, along with proven and recommended solutions to support them.
The report recommends a hybrid community model that interconnects physical local competence centres with digital platforms and online networks to provide access to relevant information, contacts and online tools along with specific training, coaching and funding programmes. This approach would need to be supported by effective policy instruments.
The analytic work has been co-funded by the COSME programme of the European Union via the call COS-CIRCFASH-2019-3-02: Accelerate and scale up innovation applications for a sustainable and circular fashion industry.
Some circular economy practitioners believe that switching to biomass is the best way to implement the circular economy. However, the circular economy is not synonymous with bioeconomy. The circular economy is about retaining the value of materials for as long as possible, and consequently it cannot be achieved simply by adding more and more primary biomass to the economy. Demand for biomass is increasing rapidly yet supply is limited, leading to problems for climate and biodiversity.
Join our panellists on 13 June at 10:00 - 11:30 CEST to discuss the intersections between the circular economy, bioeconomy, climate change and biodiversity. The event will explore the circular economy's role in balancing biomass supply and demand and reducing negative impacts on biodiversity and climate change.
