FOR BRANDS & PURCHASERS
Buy and Sell Recycled Materials and Products: Ensure your diversion goals also include goals for utilizing recycled or recovered material. Check your existing procurement guidelines for recycled content preferences.
Share Successes: Do you already recirculate materials from your waste stream for new uses? Engage your customers and employees about the positive impact of your actions.
Spark Innovation: Create a companywide “Pitch Your Waste” contest to encourage understanding of waste as a resource.
Design for End-of-Life: Ensure your products and packaging are built to be easily recyclable or reusable.
FOR UPCYCLERS
Join the Upcyclers Directory: If your primary business is focused on utilizing waste as feedstock, please add your company and material(s) focus.
Brag About Your Impact: Track your impact including # of jobs created, tons diverted from landfill and carbon and water savings. Communicate with your community and local policymakers your contributions.
Design for Recirculation: Are your own products or materials designed to be recirculated at end-of-life?
Build Community: Network with other Upcyclers to share best practices and even utilize each other’s by-product!
FOR GOVERNMENT
Map the Upcyclers Ecosystem: Identify the Upcyclers in your community and measure their economic and environmental contributions.
Conduct a Material Flow Analysis: Is there material your local businesses are importing that could be obtained locally from your waste stream?
Convert, Don’t Just Divert: Your diversion goals should be met with equally robust market development goals to support local conversion for recovered material. Engage with both the economic development and materials management teams to create a holistic conversion strategy.
Aligning Procurement: Give preference for products with recovered or discarded content.
FOR ACADEMIA
Seek Out Fellow Enthusiasts: Build a community of researchers and professors that are working on resource recovery and material innovation.
Be a Community Resource: Engage public officials and local entrepreneurs to create awareness around how circularity supports beneficial impacts to both the society and the environment.
Set an Example: Does your university purchase and sell products that contain recycled materials or reutilize previously used items?
Educate your students: Work with students to create a culture that inspires sustainable consumption practices that support a thriving society and a healthy environment. Be the change you want to see and lead the way to show how it can happen!!
Interested in sharing best practices with your peers? Email info@circularcolab.org with your name, industry, and material focus and we’ll get back to you with further details!