The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA) has always been a meeting place for Sweden’s future. It builds bridges between the business community, the public sector, academia and the political sphere.
Its two-year project "Resource Effectiveness and the Circular Economy" was aimed at making Sweden more competitive in a future with finite resources, in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, by economising on resources and developing new technologies, services and business models in five areas:
premises,
mobility,
textiles,
food and
plastics.
Read the synthesis report, marking the completion of the project, which presents the most important conclusions, recommendations and action plans from the five subprojects.
Holland Circular Hotspot is a private-public platform in which companies, knowledge institutes and local authorities collaborate to promote and support international collaboration and knowledge exchange on Dutch circular economy, and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, a government agency for sustainable, agricultural, innovative and international business development and growth, have come together to share insights, networks and resources to help kickstart circular developments that will boost the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Circular examples from various market segments closely linked to SDGs such as agri-food, manufacturing and the built environment are included in the brochure next to cross-sectoral topics such as consumer goods or plastics.
The European Manufacturers of Expanded Polystyrene (EUMEPS) is the voice of the Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) industry. It has published an op-ed welcoming the European Commission’s commitment to a Renovation Wave and the outline of its strategy shared in the roadmap published in May 2020. It believes that this initiative is a great opportunity for scaling-up current renovation rates and EU’s climate and energy efficiency goals.
EUMEPS agrees that increased renovation can be a key contributor to creating jobs and stimulating economic recovery in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It embraces the Commission’s finding that buildings are also critical for making circularity work and its objective to implement the Renovation Wave in line with circular economy principles.
Plastics represent a serious waste-handling problem with only 10% of the plastic waste generated worldwide being recycled. Plastics recycling is instrumental to close the loop of the circular economy by re-introducing into the economy high-quality plastic recyclates incorporated into new products.
The brochure highlights the importance of moving towards a circular economy for plastics in Europe. It identifies the most commonly used types of plastics and describes the current state-of-play, challenges faced by the European mechanical plastics recycling industry and key recommendations for overcoming them. Plastics recycling’s environmental benefits and economic importance are also touched upon.
The GLOPACK (Granting society with LOw environmental impact innovative PACKaging) project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research programme, investigates food packaging with no environmental footprint and the ability to extend the shelf-life of food products.
The GLOPACK position paper aims at clarifying many debatable points related to bioplastics and biodegradability, especially terminology, and focuses on the benefits of biodegradable (in natural conditions) packaging material that can help the food sector enter the virtuous loop of the circular economy.
The paper also proposes some recommendations (basic, strategic and tactical interventions) to help all stakeholders in the food packaging sector to align with the common goal of ending plastic pollution.
Two European companies, polyamide supplier Domo and polymer manufacturer Covestro, are collaborating with Dutch technology startup Circularise to create a system for tracking plastics.
PackAlliance aims to modernise Higher Education curricula to better serve the plastic packaging sector's labour market needs. It has therefor prepared a questionnaire to gather information on the skills needed in the circular economy applied to this sector. Which skills are vital in the plastic packaging transition to circular economy?
ACI’s Future of Polyolefins Summit, on 20 and 21 January 2021 in Antwerp, will provide the perfect opportunity to meet with leading executives and experts from across the entire value chain.
Le secteur de l’événementiel est plus que jamais concerné par les enjeux de durabilité et de préservation des ressources. Conscients de la nécessité de concilier l’organisation d’événements et l’économie circulaire, les acteurs du secteur doivent se mobiliser davantage afin de mettre en œuvre les leviers d’action existants.
