How can companies shift consumer behaviors to advance circular outcomes?

What do recycling, reusable packaging and rentals all have in common? They rely on consumer behavior to succeed. From renting a dress to successfully using a blue bin, the consumer plays an active role in returning materials and ensuring circular outcomes.  But when a consumer is unfamiliar or unwilling to participate, circular initiatives and business models can fail. How can you encourage your consumer to change their behavior and ensure circular success? Join this panel to learn from practitioners who are studying and provoking consumer behavior change. 

Where are consumers when it comes to circularity, and what will it take to engage them more effectively? In this session, SC Johnson is pleased to have Chris Coulter, CEO of GlobeScan present the latest global consumer insights from the Healthy & Sustainable Living research program. Uncovering findings from this 31-market consumer research study, Chris will explore opportunities for successful consumer engagement. Join this dynamic session to ask questions, share comments and to better understand how to activate and engage 8 billion consumers.

This session is sponsored by SC Johnson. Sponsored sessions are sponsor-created and hosted breakouts, created independently by the sponsor without input from GreenBiz. Please note that attendee contact information will be shared with the sponsoring company.

Confusion and chaos often define today’s recycling infrastructure. But a collaborative approach across the value chain—from ensuring a product can be recycled and educating consumers to proper sorting support and identifying end-use markets—can make a difference.

 Join this session to learn how stakeholders in the food and beverage carton industry came together and increased recycling access rates by nearly 240 percent since 2009. In this discussion, you’ll hear how nuts and bolts solutions were identified and how stakeholders worked together to remove recycling barriers, build consumer knowledge, change consumer habits, and more.

This session is sponsored by Tetra Pak. Sponsored sessions are sponsor-created and hosted breakouts, created independently by the sponsor without input from GreenBiz. Please note that attendee contact information will be shared with the sponsoring company.

How can diverse stakeholders move beyond designing out waste and keeping products in play, to regenerating local economies and natural systems?

The promise of a circular economy includes so much more than just designing out waste and keeping molecules in play. The opportunity, and necessity, is to improve the health of every single system that we touch — from product design and manufacturing to how we engage suppliers across a value chain. What’s the opportunity for your organization to regenerate the natural systems upon which your business depends? How can we learn from nature’s ingenious design to increase value across all forms of capital? What does it take to move beyond regenerative sourcing to a truly regenerative business model? Join this session to ground regenerative principles in practice.

What are digital product passports, what data should they include and how can they facilitate a more circular future? 

The European Union recently announced a requirement for all regulated products to contain a digital product passport. What are the global data requirements for these passports, and how can they act in service of a more circular economy? In this session, Capital Equipment Coalition North America members will discuss their collaboration on data requirements and a unified digital product passport. Together we’ll explore how this tool could facilitate circularity, what data can and should be measured and the responsibilities of each player across the value chain.

What aligned vision for circularity can be built across the electronics value chain, and what will it take to make that vision a reality?

There is no such thing as a circular product. It is the circular ecosystem — allowing a product to be collected at end of life, recovered through recycling, repair and remanufacturing and circulated back into the economy — that determines a product's circularity. In order for an industry to transition to this ecosystem, we first need to agree on what that looks like.

The electronics industry needs a circular north star, a collectively established strategic vision for the future of circular electronics. That’s why the Circular Electronics Partnership (CEP) — consisting of more than 25 companies and essential players across the electronics value chain — is set to publish a Blueprint for Circular Electronics Industry. As a foundational narrative, it will enable essential follow-up projects from supporting standard development to capacity building to advocacy and trade facilitation. Through an open dialogue with diverse industry leaders and topic experts, this session will offer a sneak peek into the latest insights of CEP’s blueprint and discuss the next steps and priorities to make this vision a reality by 2030.

What does it take to launch community enterprises that prioritize those most harmed by the linear economy, and how can you meet your sustainability goals with justice-centered strategies?

Communities most harmed by the linear economy’s wastefulness must be central in the design and implementation of a new, circular and just economy. In pursuit of that ideal, Microsoft partnered with the Just Transition PowerForce — an advisory committee of U.S.-based environmental and climate justice organizations — to align zero-waste strategies and circular initiatives with community regeneration.  

This session will unveil key learnings and outcomes from the partnership, including an established framework for measuring and evaluating environmental justice and opportunities to advance justice-centered strategies while meeting sustainability goals. Together we’ll explore an Atlanta-based pilot project geared towards co-creating and incubating community-led and -owned zero waste enterprises, designed to bring more Black-owned suppliers and partners into its business ecosystem.