Can edible cutlery and modular design revolutionise the events industry?

Circle Lab is officially live, with an exciting challenge from Circular Glasgow to get things off the ground! Submit your ideas today on www.circle-lab.com

For those of you who have been following Circle Economy for a while, you may understand just how excited we are to be launching Circle Lab today.

We embarked on this journey two years ago, when we saw the need for a platform that not only captures ideas and encourages collaboration and circular innovation, but also ensures that those ideas see the light of day and are actually implemented.

Two years on, this is what we have achieved:

• Last year, an early prototype of Circle Lab enabled the co-creation of unique reverse logistics solutions for the mobile phone industry and laid the groundwork for the platform we’re unveiling today.
• In August 2017, we opened access to our knowledge hub — a collection of over 750 case studies on the circular economy that has since brought together nearly 2,000 industry experts, academics, and policy-makers, who are now using the hub to learn more about and contribute to the topic. Our partners over at Unc Inc are currently working hard to integrate the knowledge hub into the next release of Circle Lab. Sign up to the Knowledge Hub newsletter here to stay in the loop.

Today, we are not only launching Circle Lab, but we also have an exciting challenge for our global community to engage with.

The Circular Events Challenge: Now Open for Ideas

From setting up to cleaning up, there is an opportunity every step of the way for circular strategies to improve the impact and legacy of high-profile events and conferences. Organisations around the world are already playing their part: from edible cutlery and biodegradable food packaging to harvesting rainwater, urban farming, and take-back schemes- countless case studies have inspired and energised us as we worked on formulating this challenge, and we hope they spark your imagination and inspire you to submit your own ideas to the platform.

Sponsored by Circular Glasgow, an initiative of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, the challenge is a global call for ideas on how the circular economy can enable local businesses to drive positive change in the events industry. Anyone, anywhere in the world — regardless of field or level of expertise — is welcome to submit their ideas starting today until March 28. Together with partners Zero Waste Scotland, Scottish Event Campus and the Glasgow Convention Bureau and Major Events team at Glasgow Life, Circular Glasgow will be supporting the implementation of winning solutions locally and sharing learnings along the way with our online community.

Read the brief and join the challenge here >

Circle Lab has been made possible in part by a grant from the eBay Foundation, a corporate advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

Circular Glasgow complements Zero Waste Scotland’s and the Scottish Government’s nationwide support for SMEs to develop circular economy business ideas, including its £18million Circular Economy Investment Fund and Circular Economy Business Support Service. Both are supported by the European Regional Development Fund through the £73million Resource Efficiency Circular Economy Accelerator Programme.