Circle Economy Foundationnews
Published on: 
February 9, 2024

Circular solutions to key challenges come out of Beyond Next, the circularity festival

With our partners ABN AMRO, AMFI, HEMA and the City of Amsterdam, the festival jointly hosted four challenges on themes of urgent importance: promoting access over ownershipthe role of fashion educationsingle-use plastics, and organic waste recovery.

In preparation for the event, from December 19 to January 21, we crowdsourced more than 400 ideas and insights from a global community of students, citizens, entrepreneurs, and countless other industry professionals. The Circle Economy team identified and clustered all submissions into key areas of opportunity that served to inspire and support the development of new solutions at the Beyond Next challenge workshops.

Below are the four solutions that were presented on stage at the festival:

“HEMAWAY”: Party-as-a-service

HEMAWAY
Source: Pexels

The Problem

This is the story of why Balloons Blow and Straws Suck. 3/4 of three to twelve year old kids in the Netherlands throw a birthday party every year. Because most of the party necessities out there today are made of single-use plastic, these parties produce an estimated one million kilos of plastic waste. The production of this amount of plastic alone creates the same CO2 emissions as a full Boeing 787 flying between Amsterdam and New York 25 times!

The Solution

What if HEMA would provide us with the opportunity to rent a party? This would not only be good news for the environment, it would also be a great service. Imagine — you go to HEMA’s website, and you just order the party you like: a kid’s birthday party, a BBQ party, a HEMA wedding! Of course you can customise your party: you pick your kid’s favourite theme, such as “Princess”, “Badman” or “Ajax”, and you click on what you need, and on the amount you need: 6 banners, 25 cups, 15 plates, 10 dresses, 10 hats, 50 balloons. You can get it delivered, or you can pick it up yourself at a HEMA in your neighbourhood. At the end of the day you just put all the cutlery and party props back in a box, and you have it brought back to HEMA.

Check out the other solutions that were developed at Beyond Next for this challenge on Circle Lab >

“Toybox”: Toys-as-a-service

Toybox
Source: Pexels

The Problem

On average, children have 70+ toys and parents spend over €6,000 on toys over the lifetime of their kids. Children demand different toys at different age levels, and the experience is that they outgrow their toys quickly. Next to this, many kids have a few favourite toys and the majority of their 70+ toys is never used. A real cost to the environment.

The Solution

To save the environment, to unburden parents and free up space in the house and to shift mindsets as early as possible, Toybox provides a toys-as-a-service proposition where parents can subscribe to starting from €20 a month. Storage, logistics, cleaning, refurbishing/repair when needed is all taken care of by Toybox. Parents can decide themselves how long they would like to keep a certain toy. Both online and via pop-up location toy exchanging can take place. Sharing toys will teach children the circular mindset!

Check out the other solutions that were developed at Beyond Next for this challenge on Circle Lab >

Leadership Learning Circle: “We’d like our students back now, thank you very much”

For current and next generation fashion professionals (AMFI students, AMFI staff and AMFI alumni), who are lacking the latest knowledge on circularity and sustainability, and the skills to put that knowledge into practice, the Leadership Learning Circle is a training and re-training programme that builds leadership skills and expertise on circular innovation, via workshops, masterclasses, field trips and real life case studies.

Leadership Learning Circle

The Problem

Neither students, teachers nor present day fashion professionals are equipped to deal with the new fashion reality. We must all go back to school. Instead of siloed efforts to educate and re-educate, we should be conducting this future-proof training at once, with students, staff and fashion professionals around the same table. In addition to hard skills and content knowledge, we also recognised that leadership skills are critically needed to activate this new found expertise in a practical way and incite change within a project, classroom, or brand.

The Solution

The LLC will combine the two. The LLC is an intensive 1-year programme in AMFI that jointly retrains a collective of students, educators and fashion industry professionals, therefore enabling life-long learning. The reality school concept remains core to the programme, as students and staff will be imbedded in the brands that are participating (1 day per week) and the fashion professionals will be embedded in AMFI (1 day per week). In addition, the group will ‘learn by doing’ through continual experiential field trips and masterclasses.

Check out the other solutions that were developed at Beyond Next for this challenge on Circle Lab >

Afval Afhaal Amsterdam: Return logistics pick up service for juice waste

Afval Afhaal Amsterdam
Source: Afval Afhaal Amsterdam and Pexels

The Problem

70% of restaurants throw out 50% of their organic waste, 65% of food SMEs in Amsterdam don’t know how to close the loop, and, according the the AMEC, the number of small scale food associated producers are rapidly increasing.

The Solution

To connect supply and demand, divert organic waste, and close the loop on organic waste for Amsterdam’s small independent food businesses by 2025, Afval Afhaal (“Waste Collection”) uses local street sweepers (an existing infrastructure in Amsterdam) to pick up organic waste from small scale food producers and SMEs and deliver it to producers who need it. An online database or marketplace enables registered businesses to list their resources and find raw materials for their own production, and incentive schemes with partnering organisations would encourage adoption.

Check out the other solutions that were developed at Beyond Next for this challenge on Circle Lab >

We are currently developing roadmaps for each of these solutions with our challenge partners and will keep you up to date on progress made over the next year through Circle Lab, but we encourage you to start your own project around one of these themes!

Keen to work on one of these ideas in your own city? Get in touch with us! >

Check out the 20 other solutions that were developed at Beyond Next on Circle Lab, under the “Refinement Phase” of each challenge >


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