Opportunity Peterborough (OP) and Peterborough City Council (PCC) held a conference on 24 January 2019 to bring together practitioners in the fields of Circular Economy (CE) and Future Cities (FC), to share ideas and experience and develop the business case for circular, sustainable cities. This was an event to inspire those working in or adopting circular economy to help them learn, share, network and collaborate and develop future pathways to successful implementation. The event will strongly link to follow up events to be run by the University Centre Peterborough (UCP) in June 2019 focused on the practically based research and development on the topic. UCP’s transition to become a fully-fledged University will include a unique focus on the Circular Economy. The combined impact will reinforce the city’s position as leading the way on Circular City thinking and development.
The conference itself considered the complex topic considering two connected themes through an overarching narrative of best practice and business case development alongside the co-creation of collaborative next steps. It showcased Peterborough’s significant progress in CE and FC and how the city plans to build on this in the future in collaboration with others. The conference will also consider CE in the context of how small to medium size businesses can build innovative solutions through collaboration and will bring learning from the European Investment Partnership (EIP) Small Giants imitative to inform this element.
The event featured inspiring speakers to challenge and excite the delegates and to drive future collaborations to accelerate national and international progress towards a circular future. The presentations themselves were supplemented with interactive Q&A sessions, networking and focused workshops to ensure that all attendees gained valuable learning.
Finally, the sessions was filmed so the learning can be accessed via the Future Peterborough websites beyond the event itself and insight. Keep a lookout on this page for our video!
Conference Themes
The conference focused on two connected themes under the banner “Future Circular Cities – Making It Real”:-
A – Practical Approaches to City Scale Circular Economy — putting CE it into practice at a city scale.
B – Developing the business case, from theory to implementation including the EIP Small Giants collaboration, scale up and Industrial Strategy relevance.
We look forward to updating you with outcomes of the event and the progress of circular economy initiatives in Peterborough. To find out more about our circular city project please email: circular@opportunitypeterborou