Introduction

Research centres range from the Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute (EBRI) at Aston University, exploring the commercial development of emerging renewable energy, bioenergy, bioproducts and supporting technologies, through to the Brownfield Research and Innovation Centre at the University of Wolverhampton, ensuring that land ‘reuse’ plays a major part in protecting our planet’s environmental and biodiversity resources. 

Meanwhile practical implementation of the principles of the circular economy can be found in organisations ranging from The Active Wellbeing Society in Birmingham, reducing food waste and creating sharing libraries in communities, through to International Synergies Limited applying whole system approaches to resource management through their ‘industrial symbiosis’ methodology.

Although featuring towards the end of the circular economy ‘cycle’, recycling is also crucial to the optimisation of resources, not only in materials, such as the RECOVAS project led by the Warwick Manufacturing Group and European Metal Recycling, or the reuse of tyre and inner tube waste to create carbon black for the chemical industry through EBRI’s Velorim project.