Alisea has combined design with recycling to produce interesting corporate gifts. It offers beautiful, personalised items that include secondary raw materials such as paper, metal, textile or even graphite.
MaterialDistrict is a match-making platform in the field of innovative materials, connecting material manufacturers and distributors with creative professionals and providing designers with information about materials.
The categories of materials are:
Plastics
Other naturals
Wood
Metals
Glass
Coatings
Ceramics
Concretes
Natural stones
There are listings for each material, with tags such as "biobased" or "recycling", making it very easy to find a circular material. Manufacturers and suppliers can promote and sell their goods, and creative professionals can look for the material that is right for their project.
The African Circular Economy Network (ACEN) aims to build a restorative African economy that generates well-being and prosperity for all its people.
It carries out research relevant to the African context and its needs, raises awareness and promotes training on the concept, benefits, principles and practice of the circular economy, and fosters networking.
The network is active in 43 countries. In 2017 it co-organised the first Circular Economy Conference in Africa with the European Union and the South African Government (World Economic Forum Africa, Durban) and it was present in WCEF2022 and WCEF2023. It engages with the EU to discuss ways to be inspired by the African continent.
Circul'R is a team that has the expertise to help companies and regions shift to a circular economy.
It aims to unlock the circular economy's potential by connecting innovative startups with companies so that they can co-create solutions to accelerate their transition towards the circular economy.
Focus areas:
training on identifying the challenges and opportunities of the circular economy,
consultancy (helping companies go circular,
Circul'R Club (more than 100 companies and institutions, from large groups to local authorities, including ESG funds and committed startups. Each participant contributes to the transition towards a circular economy model),
Circul'R coalitions (aiming to bring together companies from different sectors to address specific issues and deploy circular projects).
Valdelia collects and recycles furniture waste from French businesses. Its services are geared to:
Owners of used, non-residential furniture, such as public and private companies, public authorities and services
Valdelia members, such as removal companies and office furniture dealers
Valdelia enables professionals to meet legal requirements while also helping the environment, the economy and society.
Furniture which is still in good condition is reused byValdelia's partners in the social and solidarity economy. The rest is used or recycled back into secondary raw materials.
A large range of non-residential furniture can be collected and recycled.
When designing the varioPrint 135, Océ (which changed its name to Canon Production Printing in 2019) partnered with the Netherlands Enterprise Agency and Philips to experiment with the use of recycled plastic in the production of industrial printers. The company has made a further step towards circular economy and succeeded in developing an internal component that contains at least 30% post-consumer recycled polycarbonate.
Destination: a circular tourism economy aims to increase the innovativeness of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) within the tourism sector by supporting the integration of circular economy elements into their services, products and business models. This handbook is the result of work carried out in the Interreg South Baltic innovation project, CIRTOINNO.
In addition to providing an overall understanding of the concept of circular economy and the specificities of tourism and the South Baltic partner regions, the CIRTOINNO handbook investigates and discusses the opportunities and barriers for tourism SMEs to adopt circular economy principles, and identifies best practices.
Circulary is a web tool managed by BusinessEurope and its national members that contributes to the EU’s agenda on the circular economy.
It continuously brings new examples of innovative ways in which industry, SMEs and other business add to the circular economy in Europe. It highlights the regulatory and non-regulatory challenges these businesses still face in upscaling their current initiatives or starting new ones. The platform is a bottom-up, business-led hub of knowledge and expertise.
Businesses can flag up their circular initiatives and identify barriers to circularity in EU legislation. BusinessEurope will convey these views to EU policymakers.
Circulary also enables members to network and share experiences.
ABN AMRO, ING and Rabobank, all members of the FinanCE working group alongside FGGM and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, have published the first publicly available finance guidelines for the circular economy in July 2018 as input to the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. These guidelines aim to promote and develop the role finance can play in the transition.
Tarkett is a global leader in innovative flooring and sports surface solutions. It operates a take-back Restart® programme to collect flooring, which is then sorted and selected as a source of raw materials for use in its production process.
