The European Race on GPP
To date, Italy is still Europe’s only country where Green Public Procurement (GPP) is compulsory: the boot-shaped country is a GPP textbook case. For over two years, all public procurements h...
Boosting Waste Diversion with Blockchain
Uttering the word “blockchain” within the technology sector will not cause fellow employees to bat an eye, instead they will probably start to delve into a deep discussion on this buzzin...
A Database for the Circular Economy
As the founder of the Circular Economy Club (CEC), it’s safe to say that Anna Tarí is as well placed as anyone to keep her finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the circular ...
CircE: an Interreg Europe Project Steering the Economy Towards a Circular Model
The Circular Economy (CE) is on the tip of the tongue of politicians and business representatives across the European continent and beyond. However, quite often the real issue hindering the developm...
The Construction Industry: Increasingly Green, Increasingly Circular
With estimated overall costs of about $135 billion for the insurance industry, 2017 represented the bleakest year in their history, mainly because of the compensation for damages caused by Hurricane...
Grid-Interactive Buildings: Good for Business and the Environment
Grid-interactive buildings are designed to create lower, flatter, flexible load shapes which reduce operating costs for the building owner. They can also provide services to the grid such as demand ...
Power to Imagination. The Radical Green Future of Ecotopia 2121
Radical, visionary, eccentric, ironic, and firmly outside the box. Shamelessly, boldly and irreverently utopian. You can love it or hate it, but you can surely not remain indifferent to Al...
REbuild: To Decarbonise Construction We Need to Close the Loop
We need a paradigm shift, even in the construction sector. Deep, fast and pervasive. In one word, ground-breaking: or better “disruptive,” as the innovator’s jargon calls it. Innov...
Energiesprong: How to Transform 11,000 Apartments into Net Zero Energy Buildings
Sprong in Dutch means “leap forward.” In fact, a leap forward is exactly what Energiesprong has realised over the last few years in the residential housing construction and energy effici...
New Model, Different Jobs
Cillian Lohan is Rapporteur of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) for the circular economy. His fundamental conviction that sustainable and resource efficient business models will eve...
The Sustainable Future of Labour
Complexity is key to analysing employment’s social, economic and environmental challenges. This is a pivotal statement in the research and studies by Enrico Giovannini – an eco...
Moving from Endless Growth to Endless Jobs
In his famous book The Ecology of Commerce, Paul Hawken wrote: “[...] we have to look at how our present economic system consistently rewards short-term exploitation while penalising long-term...
Is the Circular Economy an Employment Driver?
Eight hundred million by 2030. This is not a new climate or energy target set by the international community, but the number of jobs that are expected to be lost by then. This labour squeeze will be...
New Jobs: How Many and of What Kind
Transitions are never easy, especially for those whose livelihoods are rooted in the models left behind. Drastic societal and economic changes have always caused fear of job losses, whilst often act...
Making Products Last
Recently, Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, made an unnoticed but major statement. She announced that Apple’s goal was to eliminate the ...
The Future of Employment? It's Very Similar to its Past
Flexibility is the future of employment. Collaborative consumption will save the world. The internet is a democratic revolution. These are some of the enthusiastic statements that have marked our ec...
“Too Much Pessimism Over Europeâ€
We are living in a time of strong evolution, great transformations and with a labour market that is changing fast, whilst economic growth remains rather slow. An unprecedented situation th...
Future-Proof Incubators: Between Work and Innovation
According to a recent global study,(1) incubators and accelerators that are connected to universities alone created over 70,000 jobs between 2017 and 2018, generating a revenue of $3.2 billion ...
Food, a Basic Unit of Connection
Every living being is the result of relationships that are influenced by context and, in turn, capable of influencing the natural and social environment around them. We are open systems with circula...
3D Intelligence
Non-conventional is the standard definition of Gunter Pauli’s ideas. The visionary entrepreneur from Antwerp has always tried to overthrow the rules of neoclassical economics, with an ability ...