Circular Economy –HOW TO DO IT SMART

10th of February, 09.00 GMT

The sixth Nordic-Irish Partnership event on Smart Cities focuses on circular economy. The webinar explored this topic in a Nordic and island of Ireland context.

As the economy and population grow in tandem, the consequent rise in global demand and consumption accelerates the depletion of the Earth’s finite resources. The linear production chain of the throw-away society is unsustainable in the long run. To solve this pressing issue, we must reconfigure the economy to utilize the potential of re-using what would otherwise be discarded as waste. By managing waste intelligently and restructuring production chains, salvaged resources can be fed back into the economy as a resource, so that waste is not wasted but rather kept and used multiple times if not indefinitely. This loop is the essence of the Circular Economy.

In the Smart City webinar, we explored various ingenious approaches to incorporating the concept of Circular Economy into the models of production cycles in the Nordic countries and the island of Ireland. These innovations pertain to not only new conceptions of ownership through leasing or sharing arrangements, repairing, and extending the lifecycle of products, and smart waste management and recycling but also new models of collaboration and partnership.

This event, part of the Nordic-Irish Partnership for Smart Cities, presented an inspiring range of smart solutions and approaches to implementing the circular economy from the island of Ireland and the Nordics.
Click on the names of the speakers to see their presentations
• Karen Phillips, Director of Environment and Regeneration, Derry City & Strabane District Council: Embracing the Circular Economy in the Irish North West City Region.
• Sofia Carlsson Mc Conell, Head of Smart City Sweden West (region Göteborg).
• Gina Aspelin Hedbring, Project leader, Smart City Sweden
• Juho Alpua, Hukka AI, Head of Sales, U.K & Ireland: Impact of Food waste & Case examples of reducing it.
• Bo Gottlieb, Program Manager Circular Copenhagen