Circular Economy Fellow at WRI, Mathy Stanislaus, is exploring, “what are the key levers, specifically policy levers, to accelerate the circular economy?” He’s found some key points: value retention processes (extending life and enabling second life of products) and creating and optimizing a secondary materials system (a market for using used materials in safe, healthy and effective manners). Doing so can reduce new resource extraction by 80 percent and GHG impacts by 80-90 percent. The incentives are high — and so prioritization is imperative.

The senior director of open innovation and circular economy for food at Danone North America at Danone, Merijn Dols, came to Circularity 19 to talk about a circular food system. “The circular economy is big in the construction and built world — but food has been lagging,” he said. How can we push it forward? There’s a lot of innovation and design going on in food already, Dols pointed out. So corporations need to focus on creating food lasts longer and is healthier.