The Circular Economy Blueprint – Bax & Company partners with industry leaders to write circularity guide for composite materials
Bax & Company, together with aerospace manufacturer Leonardo and CSR Europe, has launched the Circular Economy Blueprint to guide industry leaders towards sustainable practices and interventions in the value chain of composite materials key to Europe’s low-carbon future.
The Blueprint launched at the 2022 European SDG Summit, which brought together hundreds of C-level executives, European institutions, representatives and civil society leaders to build a more inclusive green transition.
Led by the Circular Economy team in collaboration with CSR Europe and aerospace manufacturer Leonardo, the Blueprint distils Bax & Company’s knowledge on the circularity of challenging material types such as composites.
It details practical challenges and opportunities for policymakers, industry associations, and value chain stakeholders committed to moving composite materials to a circular model.
“The Blueprint sets the mould for composites stakeholders to take action on composites circularity. Only when the low-carbon material of the future is sustainable from start to finish can we build a greener Europe”
Senior Innovation Consultant at Bax & Company
The Blueprint collects knowledge from Europe’s composite material leaders
The Blueprint is the result of 10 months of work by the New Materials and Circular Economy Accelerator. The Accelerator is a European-wide think tank bringing together all the value chain partners necessary to make composite materials circular.
Bax & Company’s expertise in advanced materials and the circular economy led Leonardo and CSR Europe to choose the consultancy as a knowledge partner for the think tank and lead author for the Blueprint.
Sustainability improvements in the aviation industry rely on composites
We cannot build a low-carbon, energy secure Europe without composite materials. Lightweight composites support our wind turbines and make transport drastically more efficient. But there is a dirtier side to these otherwise low-impact materials we must address.
Innovation Consultant at Bax & Company
Increasing the efficiency of wind turbines requires advances in composite materials.
The urgent need for composite materials to ditch linear and embrace circularity
Europe will generate 683,000 tons of composite waste in 2025. The global recycling capacity is under 100,000 tons. Until industry can find better ways to repurpose or recycle these materials, over half a million tons of composite production will follow a linear path to landfill.
As the Blueprint sets out, the solution will be to turn the composites economy into a circular one. A circular economy for composites will:
- Reduce greenhouse gas emissions
- Reduce the need for raw material extraction
- Reduce Europe’s dependency on material imports
- Support job creation while respecting planetary boundaries
The transition to circular composite materials is not only necessary, but presents opportunities for stakeholders willing to invest time and resources in circular practices and models.
A circular design for composites will lead to lower scrapping rates, better material design, and resource and energy cost savings for manufacturers
Innovation Consultant at Bax & Company
Written by Bax & Company’s Circular Economy experts Marcos Ierides, Johanna Reiland, and Emma Arussi with input from the think tank working group, the comprehensive guide distils our expertise on composite circularity into practical challenges and opportunities for policymakers, industry associations, and individual value chain stakeholders. The report can be read below:
Download the Circular Economy Blueprint for Composite Materials
We help industry leaders turn their value chains circular
Building a circular value chain requires alignment across hundreds of actors. We guide industry leaders to circular transformations by uniting the right partners, providing insights on risks and opportunities and defining and monitoring the innovation processes that create change. We also have experience building European-wide community networks that facilitate stakeholder collaboration, knowledge exchange, and capacity building.
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