VELTHA'S NEWSLETTER N°17
Veltha is very grateful for your support and interest in what we do to perform research and enable knowledge exchange in the field of Circular Economy.
COP26 - Veltha's role in a click!
On November 6, 2021, under the EU Pavilion - European Union Side Event COP26, Veltha took part in the event Between Adaptation and Mitigation: the Role of Circular Economy in tackling Climate Change, inscribed in the framework of the UN Climate Change Conference to showcase the current measures that are being deployed to address one of the biggest challenges of our time with a circular economy approach.
The three initiatives, REPLACE, DigiPrime and the PolicyLab partnered together to emphasize the key role circular economy can play in fighting climate change and the current actions that are being deployed to pursue this goal.
During the event, the role of circular economy was presented, touching upon how a circular economy can address the mismanagement of material use, as it is all about how we make products. Leaving out waste, recycling, reusing, and redesigning items, alongside keeping energy in use are all processes that can sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions and regenerate nature.
The initiatives presented focus on different aspects that are essential to shape a circular economy scenario:
- REPLACE: an Interreg Europe project aiming at improving management, implementation and monitoring of regional policy instruments targeted at facilitating the transition towards a CE;
- Digiprime: an H2020 project dedicated to the design of a circular economy digital platform that can unlock new circular business models based on the data-enhanced recovery and reuse of functions and materials;
- Policy Lab: an EU-wide initiative fostering discussion about circular economy themes, bringing together regional officers, stakeholders and policymakers willing to co-design solutions for better policies enabling EU industry, SMEs and citizens to adopt a circular approach.
We are honoured to invite you all to the third episode of Loops 2.0 that will be streamed virtually on the 18th of November, 2021, at 11:00 CET.
The upcoming episode of Loops will dive into the world of textiles. We have invited two Horizon 2020 projects who are doing innovative work to improve the textile life cycle. Helping us dive into a discussion will be our special guests Veronica Sarbach representing GRETE and Tanja Meyer representing Glaukos.
A foretaste of the ground-breaking projects!
Clothing accounts for 2% to 10% of environmental impacts that are affecting Europe. The production of raw materials which include fibres and fabrics is leaving a large environmental footprint due to the methods used in the production, improving the life cycle of textiles will lead to far fewer environmental impacts across Europe.
The GRETE project will improve the existing wood-to-textile value chains by developing breakthrough technologies that can pen up the identified bottlenecks and enable increased production of man-made cellulose fibres in Europe.
The Glaukos project looks at circular solutions for the textile industry. They're developing biobased textile fibres and textile coatings that will improve the whole material life cycle.
The Role of Insurance Companies in the Transition towards a Circular Economy
Insurance companies are no strangers to environmental concerns across the world. They play a major role in paying for damages and defending those who file claims. Surveys have shown us how circular economy tactics are rising on corporate businesses internationally and how beneficial this is to the world. Companies are responding to environmental concerns and some have taken more sustainable actions such as hiring sustainability officers but more can be done. Read in the blog about the successful case of the Swedish start-up Omocom, an insurance company that provides on-demand microinsurance for the circular economy and their mission of keeping products in use in a closed-loop.
Loops 2.0 #2: a discussion with ROBOMINERS and Dig_IT.
On the 5th of November, 2021, we hosted the second episode of our webinar series Loops that orbited around the sustainable future of the mining industry. The world of mining is changing from its traditional ways towards the use of cutting-edge technology. Two projects making this change are ROBOMINERS and Dig_IT who we had the pleasure to welcome onto our series. The two projects had different approaches but both had the final goal of a sustainable future within the industry. Representing ROBOMINERS was Claudio Rossi and Dig_IT was Amal Alrish. Both showed us their innovative technologies and shared with us how their vision about the future, and the solutions to be taken think their projects are taking circular economy approaches.
