1 Plough Place
London EC4A 1DE
UK
Indium, key to the manufacture process of LCD screens and solar cells, has been reported to have little as 10-15 years left of material that is feasible to extract.
Other rare earth elements are being monopolised by Chinese companies, while materials that originate from areas of conflict are increasingly regulated, further destabilising supply chains.
There are bottle-necks in these supply chains, where one company can be responsible for the supply of as much as 75 per cent of a material, which creates high levels of risk. After use the majority of these resources are simply discarded or badly re-processed.
Reuse, Repair, Remanufacture and Recycling; the principals of the Circular Economy, provide a way to manage supply and design out the notion of waste.
For this system to work efficiently, these principals need to form part of a products life, right from the design stage – where are our products sourced from? How do we inform better design? How can we repair products? How can we disassemble them to carry out better quality recycling?
Sharing information between the different stages of design, production, use and recycling will be crucial to making the circular economy possible.
But how open can and should this data be? How can we ensure the information is accessible but also protect the processes and institutional expertise of private companies?
Please join us and our specialist panel including:
Matthew Polaine (Lead Researcher, The Circular Economy, British Telecommunications)
Nick Cliffe (Marketing Manager, Closed Loop Recycling)
Dominic Hog (Chairman, Eunomia Research & Consulting Ltd)
David Gardener (Senior Project Manager, C-Tech Innovation)
This event is being organized in partnership with Rob Maslin, director of We All Design and Mark Shayler, director of Ape.
Registration opens at 9.00am with the event starting promptly at 9.30am. A networking lunch will follow the event.