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. 

How can you educate and upskill your workforce on the complexity of circularity, and what will it take to enable their success as your organization pursues a more circular future? 

Launching circular strategies — from piloting new business models to sourcing recycled materials to designing and taking back products with a new life in mind — requires new positions, mindsets and skills. Workers across your organization — and throughout the supply and value chain — will need relevant expertise and mindsets to adapt to this new approach to business. But what does it take to effectively explain the circular economy to your colleagues and teammates? What knowledge base does your work force need to pursue a circular strategy? What will a just, equitable transition look like and how can your company upskill both your workers and those your company relies on? Join this session to dive into what it will take to upskill your organization for circularity. 

What will it take to prioritize green chemistry in your supply chain?

To build an effective circular economy, designing out toxicity is imperative. Safe chemistry in will equate to safe chemistry out, and optimizing materials to enable infinite recyclability is key.

When purchasing materials, most brands and manufacturers prioritize function, aesthetics, processability and cost. Alongside those key considerations, how can organizations improve the hazard profile and circularity of the materials they purchase? And what will it take to add “made with green chemistry” to the priority list? This panel will explore how leaders in a number of sectors are learning about, reporting on and improving the chemistry of their materials — with a goal of human and environmental safety, and transparency.

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 role can finance play in achieving ESG goals while accelerating the circular transition? 

Capital is a key enabler of the circular economy, encouraging innovation and enabling transformative companies to bring their solutions to scale. As more circular economy-focused investors join the space, each comes with unique financing objectives, skills and approaches. In this session, Closed Loop Partners will convene representatives from across the capital stack and share experience from uniting diverse groups of investors –– including institutional investors and strategic corporate investors –– to scale circular supply chains and meet diverse financial and impact commitments, including ESG goals.

What does it take to effectively communicate your circular strategy? 

We need to ensure that circularity is understood and embraced by all. While the circular economy has become integral to many corporate sustainability strategies, companies often struggle to translate this into stories that inform and inspire employees, customers, investors, and other stakeholders. To unlock the circular economy’s full potential, effective communication is key. 

Following a tumultuous year —  from the health risks of COVID-19 to shipping delays, supply chain shortages, and more — global brands have begun to prioritize circularity in their ESG strategies. This session will explore how companies have continued to embrace circularity in an uncertain world, and how leading brands leverage the power of narrative to engage stakeholders on their circular ambitions, products, and service offerings. 

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.