cirplus supports the PREVENT Alliance’s aim of keeping valuable resources in circulation for longer. To reach the goal of 100% circular plastics, plastic processors and recycling companies need to work together at national and international level. Compounders from central Germany will need to cooperate with recycling companies from Spain and converters from the Czech Republic. By digitalising the whole supply chain, we are reducing the transaction costs associated with greater use of recyclables, which creates incentives for more and better recycling worldwide. After all, no-one deliberately throws away something of value, wherever they are in the world. Industrialised economies have a special responsibility to find and develop innovative solutions and act as a model for other countries. That’s why we think our objectives are a perfect fit for the PREVENT Waste Alliance.
Plastic isn’t the problem – it’s the way it accumulates in our environment. Plastic is actually a valuable material that has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on our lives. But the way we handle it has to change. We have to stop huge amounts of plastic from finding their way into our oceans and our natural environment. Digitalisation will be crucial to establishing a circular economy for plastics in the future, because we can only complete the cycle if the right hand (the plastics industry) knows what the left hand (the recycling and waste disposal industries) is doing. By digitalising the plastics product cycle, cirplus is taking a giant step towards 100 per cent circular plastics – bringing dual benefits for the environment. On the one hand, cirplus’s work makes the idea of simply burning or exporting plastic, or putting it in landfill (often against regulations) much less attractive. On the other, every metric tonne of recycled plastics used comes with an 85% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to producing the same plastic from scratch.