OpenLobby.EU
Explore

alchemia-nova GmbH

alchemia-nova

Scientific expertise on natural resources and agricultural by-products Development of cascading utilisation strategies for renewables Evaluation of renewable and seondary resources Processing-chain analysis of renewable resources and proposal of optimisation strategies Implementation of possible biogenic substitutes for fossil products Phytotechnologies Biomining Constructed wetlands Circular economy Cradle to Cradle® projects including certification as official partner Resource recovery Sustainable buildings Including ecosystem services into the building Sutainable materials Sustainable product design Design criteria Made for recycling Research project conception, coordination and realisation H2020 - CIRC, CE, BBI, SCC, SC5, SPIRE, SFS, EEB, EE, RES LIFE, ERA-NET, ERASMUS National or regional funds Alchemia-nova is a research driven SME with competences in future-oriented project studies with inherent longterm social concern. The core ventures involve an (...)

Lobbying Activity

Response to A new Circular Economy Action Plan

15 Jan 2020

This first outline of the planned initiative is a good start. In our understanding of circular economy principles, the planned actions in this brief description don't go far enough, especially if we really want to initiate the changes that are described in the European Green Deal. The social transformation needs, on one side, to come from within the society, meaning that more incentives need to be introduced for truly sustainable and game-changing movements. The knowledge spread needs to start obligatory from early childhood onwards. Children and also grown-ups are very open and keen on understanding the principles of nature, which they can playfully also transfer to the anthroposphere. On the other side, the only way how products and society can really become sustainable or even circular, is if the legal framework really empowers sustainable products. We believe though, that in this globalised world, we can only make real changes if we are able to shift our overall objective from “more” to “better”. GDP growth or profit cannot be the only numbers to go for in an inclusive society. As long as one still strives for profit maximisation only, one necessarily tries to find workarounds; acting globally opens many doors of cost externalisation. Humans and the multinationals will use these options, even if European standards for product definitions become better. Accordingly, we can basically see two possibilities for tackling this problem: - First and reaching further, is introducing other standards of system definition that allow maximisation of the common good, for example. On the microeconomic level, companies that achieve better results in this system, will be required to pay less taxes (as they actually support the economy already) and will enjoy better framework conditions for expanding their business. On the macroeconomic level, municipalities, regions or countries that manage to increase sustainability, will be awarded larger budgets and get better conditions from the EIB, for example, to make new investments. This could lead to an upwards spiral, if well designed in detail with broad participation. - The other way of getting more sustainable products, which could also be embedded in parallel, would be to only allow sustainable products on the European market and to forbid or ban everything else, or at least to highly incentivise real circular or sustainable products, and increase taxes on unsustainable products, so that good products become cheaper than the unsustainable products. This again can be done in several ways, but the key principle should be that cost externalisation should not be the standard any longer. Another aspect to mention for this initiative and the future of the European market (medium-term) should be that we shift our wording and perception from “waste” to “resources” and act in definition of nutrients during product design, not less waste (working with positive lists). This is the first key principle in the circular economy. Empowering consumers is of course a good principle, but may again not have the required impact or reach. In our perception, the product providers and the framework behind the production should be a more important target. Of course, it is a little more difficult to work with multinationals as they could threaten to leave production lines in Europe, but only high-level interaction can really change habits at this level. alchemia-nova works exclusively on circular economy projects and strategies since 2006, when we became official Cradle to Cradle® partners.
Read full response