Quotes from CISL and Taskforce members about the report

Tahmid Chowdhury, Materials and Products Taskforce Lead, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, Brussels, said:

“The war in Ukraine has led to increased energy costs at a time we also need to also reduce our energy use. Our report demonstrates that circular solutions can have a triple benefit:  reducing carbon emissions, reducing energy consumption and reducing material use. This will be a key requirement in future European Industrial Policy. This will enable us to have a thriving industry, meet our climate targets whilst also respecting our limited planetary resources."

Carey Causey, President, Ball Beverage Packaging EMEA, Ball Corporation said:

“Developing more circular and resource-efficient aluminium value chains holds enormous potential for the transition out of a fossil fuel material production. In the packaging space, recycling of aluminium beverage cans saves 95% of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminium from its virgin source. The biggest lever for increasing closed-product-loop recycling would be the mandatory implementation of deposit return systems and setting a separate collection target of 90% for beverage containers across the EU. Investment aid for rapid deployment of state of the art remelting capacity across Europe and potential recycled content quotas would be additional helpful policy instruments”.

Céline Carré, Head of Public Affairs, Saint-Gobain, said:

“Fostering circularity and decarbonisation in the built environment are two top priorities for us. Introducing greater circularity into our production makes a significant impact. Every ton of cullet, or recycled glass, introduced into glass production saves 1.2 tons of primary raw materials, whilst the melting process of cullet use 30% less energy than melting virgin materials. These are significant benefits which demonstrate why a circular economy can reduce material needs whilst also lowering energy consumption.”

Harry Verhaar, Head of Global Public & Government Affairs, Signify & CLG Europe Chair, said:

“Moving towards circular and modular products and systems will support two sustainability goals. Circular products are by nature more resource efficient due to their repairability and re-usability. Importantly they will also enable service-based business models in which systems can be upgraded to the latest efficiency standards during their use-phase, thus maximizing carbon emission and energy consumption reductions over lifetime. It is key to develop circular procurement policies that design-in these benefits in procurement decisions, with economic, energy reduction and carbon benefits as key decision indicators”.

Anthony Abbotts, Director Group Public Affairs and Sustainability, ROCKWOOL Group, said:

“To achieve a conducive regulatory environment for circular products we need to promote durable, healthy and recyclable products and at the same time proportionally disincentivise non-circular products. Circular solutions can both reduce our carbon emissions whilst also reducing our energy consumption. For example, ROCKWOOL’s insulation products sold in 2022 will over the lifetime of their use save customers around 71 billion euros in energy costs by reducing the need of heating energy by 931 terawatt-hours.”