Innovation Project

Interested in innovative business ideas and thriving collaborations? And at the same time to cut costs, reduce CO2 emissions and respond to future regulatory requirements? Circonnact provides an online workshop series with the sustainability pioneer Gugler to open up a new way of looking at business and creating new circular, sustainable business concepts. Learn how your business or community can thrive in a future-oriented way through the circular economy approach.

The new future paradigm of our economy is: circular economy & bioeconomy. Here, the familiar principle of linear ownership is replaced by intelligent use cycles. This is an enormous challenge for our entrenched thinking. Because circularity requires letting go of the familiar and the previously proven. It leads to a completely different way of doing business and creating opportunities – with better use of resources, more intensive customer loyalty and new services and offerings. Circular Economy is both an opportunity and an innovation method that can be relevant for every manufacturing company, every service provider, every municipality.

What can I expect in this workshop series?

In three online modules of 3 hours each, we will embark together on a journey to the circular potential in the business model of your company or in the structure of your community and how this can be activated and implemented step by step. You will exchange ideas with like-minded people and receive direct feedback on your ideas. In each of the modules, we use circular economy tools to ensure that you can take away a benefit for your organization:

Module 1: Circular Economy as an Opportunity

• Benefits and advantages through circular economy concepts
• Inspiration on how circular thinking can be implemented in your environment
• Cross-industry experience and best circular practices
• Cut costs in your organization by implementing circularity
• Principles, structures and ways of thinking and working for circular solutions

Module 2: Recognizing your own Circular Economy potential

• Finding your role in the circular economy based on your own capabilities and resources
• Mindset of successful circular economy companies
• Instruments of the Circular Economy for your business development
• Defining the areas in your environment/company that derive the greatest benefit from circularity

Module 3: Activate your Circular Economy Potential

• Development of a circular business model
• Development of first steps as well as a long-term strategy
• Concrete guidance and step-by-step process model for internal implementation
• Structures for continuous circular development
• Active involvement of partners and employees

For whom is this workshop useful?

• Companies & municipalities that want to be sustainable and resilient
• Companies & municipalities looking for innovation and business opportunities 
• Companies & municipalities that want to create and implement sustainable and circular projects

Circonnact is developing solutions to empower people, companies and destinations in the transition to a more regenerative way of traveling.

How can we travel in a circular and regenerative way that is low-carbon? At the beginning of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, Cironnact decided to look into nature to explore this topic further and develop solutions. In the context of the European Biomimicry Design Challenge organized by COBIOM and the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge by the Biomimicry Institute, a team of biomimicry, business, research, communication and graphic design specialists went through a nature-inspired innovation process and developed the concept of a regenerative and nature-inspired travel hub called Wandering Gliders.

Wandering Gliders addresses the problem of excessive traveling that is harming the environment, communities and health of people. It is in our nature to move and travel, but people lack awareness as well as access to appealing and sustainable travel. Travel is amongst the largest industries in the world and can be a key driver to activate people, business and governments to restore the ecosystems if it is done in a regenerative way.

The regenerative and nature-inspired travel project Wandering Gliders aims to empower people and companies on the way to regenerative traveling. Wandering Gliders co-creates exciting and meaningful travel experiences to reconnect with nature, people and oneself and by that contribute positively to a flourishing environment and communities. It raises awareness, provides tools for impactful travel experiences and supports travel business to rebuild in a regenerative way with training, co-creating solutions and consulting. The project is developing two pilots with partners The Lionheart Experience in South Africa and the Green Festival organized by Biomimicry Granada, Esada, Utrecht University and Cobiom. Furthermore, Wandering Gliders is collaborating with KPRN, Sustain & Sustain Safaris in South Africa, Sustainability and Resilience Institute New Zealand and Whale Watch Tenerife.

How to travel regeneratively? Check out the Regenerative Travel Guide by Wandering Gliders.

Join us and be part of the transformation of the travel industry towards regenerative travel!

For more information contact Vanessa Wabitsch via email vanessa (at) circonnact.world .

Circonnact supports the market entry in Austria of Cyrkl – Central Europe’s largest Waste2Resource marketplace 

One important element of the circular economy is the change of perspective for waste. Waste is quite often a valuable resource in the wrong place; this is one of the basic assumptions of the Cradle to Cradle concept which guides us when it comes to design of products for a circular economy. However, currently a lot of resources are treated as waste and end up in landfill or incineration, thus destroying their value. To change this we worked with Cyrkl, a Greentech startup operating the largest waste to resource marketplace in Central Europe. They combine expertise in circular waste management with artificial intelligence supported IT infrastructure to match recyclers and secondary material users to companies who have not found solutions for their excess materials yet.

Circonnact supported their market entry in Austria and German speaking region with marketing expertise and insights into the needs of companies in Austria to use the platform. Cyrkl and Circonnact share the mission to connect partners and transform waste to resources. Cyrkl analyses the companies’ current waste management, identifies better solutions to either avoid waste, find partners who upgrade the current waste materials to be reused or just identify internal optimization. It is impressive to see results – their customers achieved savings up to 450.000 Euro per year by re-valuing materials and redesigning flows, and huge amounts of CO2 emissions have been reduced as well by using secondary materials instead of new ones.

It is interesting to see that, while in Austria the recycling and incineration of waste is quite advanced, the usage of secondary material is still not very common. As the regulation with the EU Circular Economy Action Plan will require more and more usage of recycled materials a lot of companies have not thought through where they could replace or at least blend virgin material with recycled material without compromising the quality of their product. Recycling and reuse are just two out of a broad range of the circular strategies that Circonnact is looking into to identify the potential for circularity for companies.