Hidden Connections in the Circular Economy

Participants at a recent CE100 event in Berlin, focused on the Circular Economy and organized by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, explored how excess capacity in one organization could be used productively by others. Attendees discussed examples of hidden connections between organizations that they had previously seen in action. For example, EDF Energy had to shut down their power stations at a cost of £1m per day because heat vents were getting blocked by jellyfish. Until they met an academic from the University of Surrey who had tracked the migratory patterns of jellyfish around the UK. Interface uses discarded fishing nets to transform into industrial grade nylon which in turn is used to carpet 60% of the worlds offices. Orange reduced the time it takes to put up a phone cell from 3 weeks to 2 days after an employee visited his mom who lived opposite a stadium and saw how quickly they could change their floodlights. NATS used predictive software technology developed in Formula 1 racing to increase the predictive capacity of air traffic controllers from 10 minutes to 2 hours, which lead to a major new joint venture with Heathrow and Hong Kong airports. E.ON used spare roof capacity of Royal Mail depots to put up solar panels, generating renewable energy and a new revenue stream. Premier Foods uses leftover bread from the baking process to produce Quorn. In essence, participants discussed how the outputs of one organization could form inputs for another, and how this concept is key to the circular economy. The group also used the Give Get exercise from an open innovation toolkit to surface more hidden connections amongst delegates in the room, leading to some enthusiastic swapping of business cards.