Our complex transportation networks and supply chains need to highlight circular manufacturing and principles in order to reduce emissions and meet sustainability goals. This session surveys programs addressing closed-loop, zero-emission fuel use, vehicle tire circular systems, auto remanufacturing and electric vehicle battery material recycling and reuse.

As plastics take over our sees and overflow our landfills, we need a completely new approach to this material.  We can’t continue to use plastic in the way that we have, but eliminating it altogether makes no sense either. The vision of a New Plastic Economy includes tenets such as eliminating all unnecessary plastic packaging, reducing single use packaging, ensuring all plastic packaging can be reusable, recyclable or compostable – not just in theory but in practice, and keeping hazardous chemicals out. This session will explore what achieving a New Plastic Economy looks like in practice and how companies and organizations are partnering to make it a reality. 

Water powers all economies, and the nascent circular economy offers an opportunity to ensure that the resource is used more efficiently, safely and equitable. Join us to learn how the circular economy can improve water resources and create demand for new innovation. We will also be exploring the timely questions: Can carbon solutions also address water challenges? Are we still prioritizing the water-energy-food nexus? What can corporations, public officials, NGOs and entrepreneurs doing to change the landscape for water solutions? Join us for an engaging discussion about water's role within the VERGE 19 agenda and stated priorities.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up — participation is first-come, first-served.

Many of the materials traditionally used across industries find their way to landfills. But innovations in materials are enabling us to make products that don’t have this end in sight. Across industries, material science has become a real hotspot for circularity. Some materials have inherently circular characteristics, whether because they biodegrade easily or can be recovered and reused or recycled. Innovations span from the disassembly of electronics for precious metals, to the use of innovative fabrics like banana leaves in apparel, to ensuring chemicals are made from products that biodegrade easily and harmlessly. What will it take to utilize these new materials at scale? Speakers from across industries provide insights.

As the first mainstream electric vehicles age, companies are beginning to explore circular systems for moving batteries from EVs to stationary storage systems to recycling. Though it's still early days for these supply chains, big battery and automakers, investors and materials suppliers are investigating the best ways to design and implement these systems.

By 2050, two thirds of the world will live in cities. However, urban centres designed for the linear economy are grappling with the effects of the current take-make-waste economy. 

But circularity isn't just about materials management. As major engines for economic growth and job creation, cities are also looking to the circular economy agenda to unlock economic, environmental, and social benefits. This session will explore how city leaders are using the transition to a circular economy to rethink material flows, create jobs for their communities, providing safe and affordable places to live and improving how people and goods move throughout the city.

Maxed-out landfills have led a number of US cities to launch municipal urban composting programs. Dozens of additional cities have composting infrastructure at smaller scale. The benefit of composting is that it has the potential to divert a significant percentage of waste from landfill and reduce methane from landfills.  Applying compost to agricultural land is extremely effective way to revitalize soil, that among other things, sequesters carbon from the atmosphere into the future. Scaling composting infrastructure in cities can be challenging however, faced by issues like low user rates and financing. San Francisco has led the way among municipalities, but big innovations in other urban centers are increasingly making composting the new norm. 

A quarter of our waste gets recycled and yet the system is broken in so many ways. First, it's a business which (like many) doesn’t price in externalities and as a result, the economics often don’t align with municipal objectives. How many times have we heard of a city trashing items that were too expensive to recycle? Even though reducing waste should count squarely as a public policy goal, there is little federal guidance, and the need for more recycling often outweighs profits. China’s decision to stop recycling much of our waste sent the industry into a crisis that its has still not emerged from. Consumers are still confused about how to recycle, recycling is rarely considered during product design, and mostly, we haven’t cracked the profit model. Innovations in financing, policy and municipal contracts offer hope for fixing the system. 

Artificial Intelligence is accelerating our ability to quickly handle vast amounts of data and learn faster from this information, making it a valuable tool to help accelerate and scale the transition to a circular economy. Machine learning can help speed up the development of new products and materials. The use of real-time data can enhance product utilization rates as well as inform systems of reverse logistics. In sectors such as food and electronics, AI is helping to design out waste and bringing savings along with it. Similar opportunities exist across sectors and functions.

In this breakout, hear stories from across a product lifecycle — design, manufacturing, use, and end of life — about companies that are putting AI to use in their circular journey and reveal some of the outcomes they have achieved.