Going circular – exploring how sustainability can boost business growth in a post-COVID19 world

Going circular – exploring how sustainability can boost business growth in a post-COVID19 world

IKEA, the Nation­al Insti­tute for Agri­cul­tur­al Bot­any (NIAB), and innov­at­ive start-up Agri-Grub, will be shar­ing how sus­tain­ab­il­ity could help SMEs save money, boost pro­ductiv­ity and become more resi­li­ent after COVID19 at a free webin­ar organ­ised by Oppor­tun­ity Peter­bor­ough in Octo­ber.

The event will help SMEs get more value from their resources, and even find new uses for waste streams through the con­cept of cir­cu­lar eco­nomy. The cir­cu­lar eco­nomy aims to move soci­ety away from the ‘take-make-dis­pose’ mod­el — where raw mater­i­als are col­lec­ted, trans­formed into products, and dis­carded as waste — into one where resources are used for as long as pos­sible and pro­duct­ive uses are found for waste streams.

This event is being run by the Cir­cu­lar Peter­bor­ough team at Oppor­tun­ity Peter­bor­ough which runs the city’s cir­cu­lar eco­nomy pro­gram­me in part­ner­ship with Peter­bor­ough City Coun­cil. The team works with busi­nesses of all sizes, but in respon­se to COVID-19 recov­ery, the work­shop will be for SMEs.

Del­eg­ates will hear from busi­nesses in the area who have bene­fit­ted from adopt­ing cir­cu­lar prin­ciples, and some of the com­mer­cial oppor­tun­it­ies for waste streams:

  • Start-up, Agri-Grub, which is turn­ing AM FRESH’s waste fruit into pro­tein and pest con­trol
  • IKEA is reusing, repur­pos­ing, and recov­er­ing mater­i­als.
  • the Nation­al Insti­tute of Agri­cul­tur­al Bot­any will also dis­cuss how plant resources could provide renew­able mater­i­als to busi­nesses across all sec­tors to reduce the use of plastic and non-bio­de­grad­able mater­i­als.

There will also be time for del­eg­ates to dis­cuss how their busi­nesses could use cir­cu­lar eco­nomy prin­ciples, and the oppor­tun­it­ies and bar­ri­ers they may face. The Cir­cu­lar Peter­bor­ough team will use the feed­back to adapt city level strategies and to tail­or long term one-to-one busi­ness sup­port for del­eg­ates.

Tom Hen­nessy, chief exec­ut­ive of Oppor­tun­ity Peter­bor­ough said, “COVID-19 cre­ated huge dis­rup­tion across sup­ply chains, and has really tested busi­ness’ resi­li­ence. We want to rebuild the eco­nomy quickly, but we also want to keep this growth sus­tain­able. With the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy, we can help busi­nesses improve their oper­a­tions while also pro­tect­ing our envir­on­ment.

“Any SME is wel­come to attend, wheth­er they’re new to the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy con­cept, already plan­ning to make changes, or are look­ing for extra inspir­a­tion on their cir­cu­lar jour­ney.”

The webin­ar will run 10.30am-12.00pm online on 14 Octo­ber 2020. Del­eg­ates will receive a link dir­ectly. For event and regis­tra­tion details vis­it: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/going-circular-how-sustainability-can-boost-business-growth-after-covid19-tickets-121711017931

Discover Peterborough’s Smart City credentials at the 2019 Smart City Summit & Expo in Taipei

Discover Peterborough’s Smart City credentials at the 2019 Smart City Summit & Expo in Taipei

As one of the UK’s top Smart Cit­ies, we’re delighted to be part of the UK government’s stand at the 2019 Smart City Sum­mit and Expo in Taipei this week (26 – 29 March 2019).

Peter­bor­ough is among the UK’s top 5 fast­est grow­ing cit­ies and we’re a hot­bed of innov­a­tion with one of the highest busi­ness start-up rates in the coun­try.

Our Future Peter­bor­ough team is ded­ic­ated to mak­ing sure our city works as effi­ciently as pos­sible for busi­nesses and res­id­ents. The Smart City Lead­er­ship Pro­gram­me and Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy ini­ti­at­ives are inter­na­tion­ally respec­ted for how they’ve improved Peterborough’s eco­nom­ic resi­li­ence and sus­tain­ab­il­ity. We want to share what we’ve learnt with oth­er cit­ies and regions around the world to develop more best prac­tice examples and sup­port more cit­ies on their smart city and cir­cu­lar eco­nomy jour­neys.

Peterborough’s impact:

  • Deliv­ers a DFID-fun­ded Smart City Lead­er­ship Pro­gram­me for the Indi­an city of Amara­vati and for the state of Mad­hya Pra­desh
  • Played a lead role in the devel­op­ment of Brit­ish Stand­ards Institute’s (BSI) suite of Smart City Stand­ards
  • Chair of the BSI’s Smart and Sus­tain­able Cit­ies Com­mit­tee (SDS/2)
  • A founder mem­ber of the Cit­ies Stand­ards Insti­tute
  • Attends the All Party Par­lia­ment­ary Group on Smart Cit­ies
  • A mem­ber of the Ellen MacAr­thur Foundation’s Cir­cu­lar Cit­ies Net­work
  • The team has presen­ted at over 50 inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences and con­tin­ues to acquire loc­al, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al media cov­er­age peak­ing with the ‘World Smart City Award’ in 2015

 

A few of our achieve­ments:

 

We’d love to tell you more about doing business in Peterborough and our Smart City and circular economy programmes.
Come and find us on stand i114.

 

Down­loads (with Man­dar­in trans­la­tion):

Peter­bor­ough, UK – home to a thriv­ing Digit­al & Cre­at­ive Sec­tor

About the Future Peter­bor­ough pro­gram­me

Sup­port­ing Smart Cit­ies in Taiwan

For more inform­a­tion about Peter­bor­ough, please vis­it investinpeterborough.co.uk

Circular Economy Conference 24th January 2019

Circular Economy Conference 24th January 2019

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@opportunitypeterborough.co.uk