The World Circular Economy Forum (WCEF) is a global event attended by thousands of forward-looking business leaders, policy makers, and experts in an effort to further the circular economy. Together, they workshop, attend sessions, and enjoy presentations around sustainable business models and resource efficiency. If you haven’t heard of it before, that’s because it’s not that old… they’ve only been gathering for a few years.
That all changes today… that’s because the concepts discussed at this event will become commonplace before long. This year’s conference, which was recently held in Helsinki, Finland, was attended by familiar names, such as Lenovo. With the company committing to the transition to a circular economy in the electronics space, we’re starting to see their newer products being made with high levels of greener materials.
We’ve seen the circular economy described in a myriad of ways… but we’d like to simplify it: reuse everything. And, while it may seem like a new concept, it’s not. In fact, human animals used to be very careful about what they took out of, and put into, the environment. Industrialization changed our views a bit on how much we can use without screwing ourselves over by destroying our own ecosystems.
But, because we’re all enlightened now, we’re going back to those “old-fashioned” notions of what it is to consume. Currently, and for far too long, our “linear” economy has been just as it sounds… we take, we toss, we don’t replenish. Now, we’ll do it like our great-great-grandfathers did, and we’ll take what we’ve used, and figure out how to keep using it.
The primary reason we need (yes, need) a circular economy is that we’re running out of what we keep just using and tossing. It’s practicality, nothing more. So, practically speaking, returning to the concept of reuse could help America become more powerful than ever before. A coalition called The Ag Bioeconomy Coalition, launched by leading industry associations, is working to advance federal policy initiatives in agriculture to foster a circular economy there.
Billed as a way to tap into the “full potential” of America’s agriculture sector, an ag bioeconomy uses renewable, biobased inputs for things like consumer goods, manufacturing materials, and fuels. With founding coalition members including the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), Corn Refiners Association (CRA), National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA), and many more, there’s power behind this stride.
The circular economy will know no bounds… Amcor seed funding initiative Lift-Off, which offers funding to start-ups innovating more sustainable packaging, recently recognized Greyparrot with a $500,000 investment. Greyparrot is bringing AI-powered waste analytics to companies… and it could help take the emerging circular economy to the next level. Their cutting-edge AI computer vision systems process large waste flows at scale… then, that data goes into providing pivotal insights to regulators, waste managers, and producers.
And those rare-earth elements that are all the rage right now because they power our clean-energy technologies… we can apply the concept here too. Policies and regulations that encourage recycling and recovery are likely headed our way. In the future, we’ll extract as much of these elements from electronic wase as possible. With the politics around rare-earth elements (REEs) resources what they are, it’s probably a good idea for the long-term.
Plastics… the bane of our existence. Also, the very material that has gifted us all with our modern lives. And we all know that it’s so hard to get rid of or recycle plastics that it’s a constant source of contention within sustainability conversation circles. But the circular economy could be coming to plastics in a very real way through the invention of what researchers describe as polyolefins that can be deconstructed.
This is important because we can’t have plastics without Polyolefins. These polyolefins make such fantastic bags, phone cases, clothes, and so on because they are light, versatile, cheap, and chemically stable… which means they don’t just decompose like cardboard or organic material. Now, thanks to researchers at Cornell University, that could all change… and we can’t wait. Come back next week, we’ll have more from the green tech space.