Suckõrs natural reed straws and materials
Suckõrs, an Estonian company, produces drinking straws and other goods using reed as a raw material. Reed is a great alternative to plastic-made items. It is indeed largely available in Estonia and in the Baltic Sea Region as well as all over Europe...
Touchpoint Oy: Sustainable workwear and closed loop service model
TouchPoint is a Finnish workwear company using eco-materials such as fabrics made from recycled raw materials, cutting waste or regenerated fibres and is utilizing surplus materials. TouchPoint offers full service model from design, managing the enti...
Sympatex: Old workwear into functional recyclable fabrics
Sympatex is part of the French consortium FRIVEP© (Filière pour le Réemploi et Recyclage des Vêtements Professionnels) covering the entire recycling circle. The goal of the consortium is to recycle discarded workwear clothing into renewable funct...
Utilisation of alternative resources in the Austrian cement industry
This example is about substituting natural resources by using alternative resources for the production of cements in Austria. Alternative fuels provide the thermal energy needed for the burning process. Especially the utilisation of non-recyclable pl...
Spinnova: Bio-based textile fibre
Spinnova is a fibre technology company, developing textile fibre directly out of biomaterials without harmful chemical processes or dissolving. The raw material of the fibre is pulp that is made of FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified wood or w...
Seramco Project: Secondary raw materials for concrete precast products
Across the world, raw materials become a scarcer resource. In North-West Europe, the construction sector uses 50 % of all raw materials and produces one third of all waste in the region. Although 70 % of waste are recovered, only a low percentage und...
PVC Up Cycling - Circular Economy and Zero Waste with the upcycling of waste fro...
The aim of the “PVC UpCycling” project is to look at the passage in the current REDEL company chain, from a linear model to a circular economy model through actions aimed at the Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) of electric cables from a disposal ...
Ecoplasteam's EcoAllene: a new 100% recyclable plastic product
Our activity is the recycling of composite packaging polyethylene – aluminium, commonly known as ”tetrapak”. After paper mills take off the paper layer, Ecoplasteam melts, with an innovative process, the two layers of polyethylene and aluminium...
Gugler*: a company devoted to circular economy and sustainability
Gugler* is a communication company with a focus on printing, advertising and web solutions, located in Melk and St. Pölten in Austria. Since the company started in 1989, protecting the environment was always a big aim and therefore they steadily mov...
DyeCoo's water-free and process-chemical free-dyeing technology for textiles
DyeCoo is the world’s first commercial supplier of water-free and process-chemical free-dyeing technology for textiles. Their CO2-based dyeing process makes textile dyeing clean, sustainable, efficient and profitable. DyeCoo based in Weesp in the N...
EMERAUDE BIO ENERGIE: the Biogas project
EMERAUDE BIO ENERGIE biogas project aims to combine a dense and competitive production area with the increase in environmental and energy challenges. The valorization of the manure for the production of renewable energy will help to keep a competitiv...
Overprint: reuse, reduce and recycle by Rotoprint Sovrastampa srl
Annually, more than 23.750 km of packaging film are rendered obsolete unusable and destined for landfills. Obsolescence is due to consumer demand fluctuation, changes on legislation and human errors in artwork processing. Rotoprint Sovrastampa, based...
Sustainable chrome plating for a broad range of plastics
The majority of chromium plating industries worldwide use a hexavalent chrome based pre-treatment. The major disadvantage linked to this practice is that hexavalent chromium Cr VI is carcinogenic, and electroplating traditionally needs several thick ...
Twence reuse of CO2 in sodium bicarbonate production
In this project Twence is demonstrating an innovative technology for re-using carbon dioxide (CO2) by capturing the CO2 from the flue gases of the waste to energy (WTE) plant and using it for the production of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) as a result ...
Fluid Intelligence
Fluid Intelligence Oy is a Finnish limited liability company led by a team of experienced oil specialists and machine learning experts. The company, a member of Cleantech Finland hub, has been quickly recognised as an established expert in the field ...
RE-EASY a circular furniture system
Arcadia Design envisions a design that changes as its owner does. It produces a modular and circular furniture system based on a design-for-reuse structure with registered patent which grants stability with less material and is easy to be assembled/d...
Circular architecture
Lendager Group specializes in delivering circular solutions to create future sustainable cities and buildings. The construction industry is responsible for more than one third of all materials, produced waste and carbon emissions worldwide. It is the...
Fertikal - organic and organo-mineral fertilizers
Fertikal is a manufacturer of organic and organo-mineral NPK fertilizers worldwide. Based in the port of Antwerp (Belgium), it collects recycled secondary materials from a maximal distance of 150 km to give them a new life as a fertilizer. These mat...
Aurubis’ and Grillo’s metal loop
The example is about a state-of-the-art cooperation between the two industrial companies Aurubis and Grillo for a traceable and uninterrupted circulation of copper, zinc and other valuable metals. As an expert in multi-metal recycling Aurubis helps t...
Johnson Controls's industrial compressors: resource efficiency opportunities acr...
Industrial compressors are very large energy-producing devices used in refrigeration, as well as heating and cooling by a wide range of industries including food production and petrochemicals. Waste leftover from the production process, replaced part...
RE4 : would you live in a fully recycled house?
RE4 stands for “Reuse and recycling of CDW materials and structures in energy efficient prefabricated elements for building refurbishment and construction”. It is a 42-month collaborative research project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon...
Schijvens corporate recycled uniforms
Schijvens produces post-consumer corporate garment made of recycled yarns by combining 50% of recycled textile and 50% of recycled PET. Schijvens does so by collecting worn out uniforms and PET bottles later used in the process. To obtain the final f...
The world’s first commercial plant to capture CO2 from air
Climeworks along with the project partners KEZO, Gebrüder Meier and the Swiss Federal Office of Energy has commissioned the world’s first commercial plant to capture CO2 from air in Hinwil, Switzerland. The plant filters 900 tons of CO2 from the a...
Tejidos Royo - Fabrics with values
The main sustainability example of Tejidos Royo is Recycled Denim Process with Hilaturas Ferre. Tejidos Royo has products with sustainable fibers: Lyocell, Hemp, recycled cotton and polyester and works with new fiber generation Refibra based on cotto...
Tekniska verken i Linköping turns waste into HFC free cooling
In Linköping, the largest part of the district cooling is produced from district heating through absorption cooling, a well-proven technique with water for refrigerant and lithium bromide as an absorbent. The absorption process is based on the same ...
Santanderina's Tencel Recycling Initiative
SANTANDERINA R/TURN offers a new range of textile products with low environmental impact. These products are made of recycled and sustainable materials such as Refibra, recycled polyester, Seaqual, and organic cotton with production processes that e...
AkzoNobel's Waste2Chemistry: a new circular value chain
As concern about the scarcity of energy and raw materials continues to grow, AkzoNobel is among a group of companies looking to use waste as a feedstock to make chemicals. The project began in 2014 as a collaboration between AkzoNobel, several other ...
Orange Fiber
Orange Fiber is an Italian company that has patented and manufactures sustainable fabrics for fashion from citrus juice by-product. Following a collaboration with Politecnico di Milano University, the company has developed an innovative process that ...
We aRe SpinDye's Sustainable colouring of man-made fibers
In an industry desperately seeking change and sustainable innovation, We aRe SpinDye® (WRSD) offers the apparel and fashion industry an updated way of bringing colors to fabrics – we remove the conventional dirty and inefficient dyeing process...
UPCYCLING THE OCEANS by Ecoalf
Upcycling the Oceans project (UTO) by Ecoalf collects the trash that is destroying the oceans and turns it into top quality yarn to produce fabrics and products, thanks to the support of fishermen. As a result of this extraordinary project, Ecoalf ha...
Decreasing textile sector’s footprint while designing eco-circular textile sol...
TDV Industries focuses on lowering the environmental footprint at every step of the life-cycle: sourcing, processing, distribution, product usage and end-of-life and new life. The process uses bio-based (bio-cotton, linen and hemp having the lowest e...
Reusing Textile Waste in Regeneracija
The core business of Regeneracija lies in recycling of textile waste from surrounding textile industries to produce insulation for construction and automotive industry, protective floor coverings, filtration, and furniture industry. The company colle...
Fighting plastic in the oceans - 100% recycled PET - Polyester yarns DIOLEN®ReC...
There are already functional business strategies to tackle plastic debris in the oceans and products which can minimize the impact of each plastic released in the seas. One of the examples in the textile industry are polyester filament yarns made out...
Fluence's Italian cheese factory: ricotta and biogas champion
Latterie & Caseificio Moro S.r.l is a dairy and cheese factory in the northeast of Italy. The factory was established in 1978 for the production of award-winning Italian cheeses. In the mid nineties, the factory was renovated to increase producti...
Multi-recycling in the steel industry
Permanent materials can be recycled several times (multi-recycling) and hence achieve an optimal saving of resources . A study by Technical University of Berlin, initiated by the Wirtschaftsvereinigung Stahl / Stahlinstitut VDEh, verifies this proper...
From metallurgical by-products to Scandium-Aluminium alloys and Scandium compoun...
The SCALE project aims to allow the extraction of Scandium (Sc) from bauxite residues resulting from alumina production (the raw material for primary aluminium production) and from acid wastes coming from titanium dioxide (TiO2) pigment production. S...
Biominerals Finland's earth alkalizing bio- and waste incineration fly ashes in ...
Hundreds of thousands tons of fly ashes from wood, field cultivation residues, peat and waste incineration processes are landfilled or applied in low value applications in Finland. Earth alkalising the fly ashes, formed inside the combustion proces...
Cradle to cradle - certified print products by Vögeli
Pureprint by Vögeli are offset printed products, designed to be biodegradable. On the basis of the Pureprint components, Vögeli PurePrint offers a wide range of offset printed products such as folders, brochures, notebooks, letter paper, business c...
Covestro's RE-Salt initiative: Recycling of industrial salty process water
In many industrial processes, large amounts of waste water, containing highly diluted common table salt (5-10%) are released into rivers, becoming a burden to the ecosystem, especially in terms of drinking water production. On the other hand, salt (N...
Veolia's PET “Bottle-to-Bottle” Recycling Plant in Rostock
In Rostock, Veolia has developed a flake-based recycling method for PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles that allows direct reuse of the recycled material for new food packaging, e.g. a new beverage bottle. Every year in Rostock, Veolia converts ...
STEELANOL's closed loop for steel process gases
From the gases produced in the steel mill furnaces, by catalytical processes or by fermentation with bacteria, high value hydrocarbon products can be produced. Some of these newly developed technologies, after more than 10 years of research and pilot...
ACCIONA’s approach to waste and debris management
The trees, shrubs and grass maintenance and conservation tasks generate wood waste such as trunks, branches, leaves and mowing remains. The goal of this initiative is to reuse, recover and vaporisation the maximum volume of plant debris and reduce th...
Jaguar Land Rover - Novelis' recycled aluminium cars (REALCAR)
Circular Economy project REALCAR (REcycled ALuminium CAR) launched in 2008 as a £2m research project to identify ways of increasing the amount of recycled aluminium in our vehicle body architectures. Our target was to identify opportunities to utili...
ACCIONA's FISSAC project: Fostering Industrial Symbiosis for a Sustainable Resou...
The FISSAC project involves stakeholders at all levels of the construction and demolition value chain to develop a methodology, and software platform to facilitate information exchange. These can support industrial symbiosis networks and replicate pi...
ArcelorMittal's Histar® Steel from 100% locally sourced steel scrap
ArcelorMittal has developed a new range of advanced high strength quality steels “Histar®”. These quality steels are available as rolled structural shapes (H-profiles) for use in building framing, bridges and for general structural purpose. This...
Dundee Precious Metals' management of mining wastes using best available techniq...
Dundee Precious Metals is a Canadian-based international mining company with operations in Namibia and Bulgaria and with exploration in Armenia, Bulgaria and Serbia. The Chelopech mine is located in central-western Bulgaria, on the southern flank of ...
Trelleborg's ceramic particle recyling on water-scarce Malta
TSS Malta has developed a water recycling system so that water used for the process which was previously lost is now being recycled and reused. Water from the particular process would contain a high amount of fine ceramic particles that even its colo...
LafargeHolcim recycles C&DW into new sustainable building materials
In the framework of European targets for recycling of Construction and Demolition Waste (70% by 2020), preservation of natural resources, increasing of sustainability weight in construction projects and urbanisation development, LafargeHolcim is comm...
Yara's recovery and reuse of nitrogen from municipal waste water
The recovery and reuse of nutrients (RRN) from various waste streams is a major focus area of the ambitious EU Circular Economy Package. In a circular economy approach, recovered materials are injected back into the economy as “secondary raw ma...
Yara's WARMCO2: Spearheading industrial-horticultural symbiosis based on residua...
Intensive greenhouse horticulture is a key pillar of the agricultural economy of the Netherlands. Dutch greenhouses are worldwide recognized for their high-tech innovation, resource-efficiency, and year-round supply of assorted premium horticultural ...
Steinzeug Keramo's Fully Recycable Clay Pipes
Steinzeug Keramo is a high-quality producer of vitrified clay sewage pipes. The outstanding constant chemical and physical properties of the material provide it with high strength, density and robustness along with high resistance against wear, tear ...
Fiskeby's fully recycled chipboard
Fiskeby Board AB is a company that produces White Lined Chipboard from 100 % recycled fibers. The production is based on three circular loops of material and energy recovery:Loop 1: Fibers are recycled from consumer and post industrial waste and ne...
Volvo's Life Cycle Analysis
By using our resources efficiently, we minimize the environmental impact of our operations. In 2011, we started with our energy approach based upon the ISO 50001 standard. Between Volvo and a neighbouring company (Stora Enso), a heating net was insta...
Borealis' off-spec polymers reuse program
Off-spec polymer is polymer that doesn’t meet the specifications that Borealis aims for its clients. This off-spec polymer is a result of production interruptions and might appear as powder (polymerisation unit), pellets or globs (extrusion unit). ...