Van Hulley is a Dutch SME that upcycles worn-out shirts into boxershorts, employing disadvantaged women as seamstresses every year and training them to join the labour market more permanently.
The Upper Austrian Cleantech-Cluster brings together suppliers, manufacturers, industrial researchers, mechanical engineers, recyclers and disposers in order to find joint solutions and develop new technologies.
Focus areas:
Material efficiency in production
Recycling
Recovery
Disposal
Circular design
Business models
Initial and continuing education
Research
SERVICES:
Cross-sector networking with researchers, companies, associations (regional, national, international)
Project development
Project management
Process support through conception, moderation of workshops, work meetings, events
The Knowledge Alliance on Product-Service Development towards Circular Economy and Sustainability in Higher Education (KATCH_e) is a 3-year EU funded project that was launched in January 2017. KATCH_e brings together 11 partners from four EU countries to address the challenge of reinforcing the skills and competences in the field of product-service development for the circular economy and sustainability in the construction and furniture sectors. It develops training materials targeting universities, researchers, practitioners and businesses for the development of sustainable product-services. The main results of KATCH_e are:
Our world economy is only 9.1% circular, leaving a massive ‘"circularity gap". This alarming statistic is the main output of this first Circularity Gap Report, in which we launch a metric for the circular state of the planet. The Circularity Gap Report provides a framework and fact-based to measure and monitor progress in bridging the gap, year on year. Being able to track and target performance via the Global Circularity Metric will help us engage in uniform goal-setting and guide future action in the most impactful way. Closing the circularity gap serves the higher objective of preventing further and accelerated environmental degradation and social inequality. The transition to circularity is, therefore, a means to an end.
