News

In this week’s fifth Circular Materials Conference, organized by the Competence Centre Recycling (CCR) of Chalmers University of Technology, RE:Source and Nordic Publishing amongst others, circular economy experts and thought leaders came together to discuss the latest developments in a global circular economy. Starting with a short welcome by the organizers, the conference began substantively with the first plenary session on the “Nordic Vision and Delivery”, where speakers of leading organizations elaborated the so-called “Nordic Approach” with the objective to turn the Nordic European Region into the most sustainable and integrated region in the world by time of 2030. Subsequent to this, the second plenary session on innovation disruptors started, with inspiring presentations about innovative circular business models.

A large part of the conference’s programme was dedicated to different breakout sessions, in which the participants received more in-depth insights on different topics in the field of a circular economy, such as options for closing the loop for plastics. In the ‘Research and Innovation’ session, Melanie Schulte from our partner BayFOR GmbH presented obstacles and promoters for the use of secondary materials that have been identified within our project Circular Flooring for PVC flooring waste and its recovery. Subsequently, the first day of the conference came to an end with a closing keynote on ‘The challenges to become circular’.

The second day of the conference was similarly structured with different breakout-sessions and break-out-room-discussions to obtain the highest possible output for all participants. Accordingly, the main topics were e.g. the future of textiles, the challenge of circular packaging and the question of how to obtain the right and broad mindset in society to implement a circular economy. Special thanks go especially to the organizers who managed to organize this hybrid onsite and virtual conference in face of the adverse circumstances caused by the global pandemic.