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