Zero Waste Scotland and The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce (RSA) are calling on ‘resource experts, product designers and material scientists’ to attend circular economy workshops in Scotland in February to ‘help accelerate Scotland’s transition to a circular economy’.

The workshops form part of the Innovate UK-funded programme ‘The Great Recovery’, which seeks to build ‘new networks to explore the issues, investigate innovation gaps and incubate new partnerships’ on how products can be made to last longer and produce less waste.

The ‘Great Recovery’ workshops aim to encourage designers, engineers, technicians, manufacturers, brands and waste managers to ‘meet, debate and collaborate’ on how products can be designed, manufactured, used and disposed of in a more sustainable way.

Utilising ‘tear down’ exercises that explore the nature of supply chains, logistics, resource efficiency, and waste, as well as commercial or technical challenges, the workshops will also look at how waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), textiles, packaging and food waste can be reduced and/or reused.

Delegates will also be asked to identify the opportunities that exist for ‘designing up’ new products and services in different industries, and the analysis of systems thinking around a closed-loop model.

‘Helping to protect against resource shortages and the rising cost of materials’

Maurice Golden, Circular Economy Manager at Zero Waste Scotland, said: “Developing a circular economy in Scotland will help to protect our economy against resource shortages and the rising cost of materials. Collaboration is a key part of this, so I’m delighted to be working with the RSA to bring together a diverse range of players to drive forward the change. This partnership will form an important part of the Scottish Government’s plans to engage with and debate the opportunities of a circular economy.

“These workshops are a great way to kick the partnership off, and I hope to see designers from across sectors contributing to and learning about the circular economy.”

Jamie Cooke, Head of RSA Scotland, added: "This is an ideal chance to bring the expertise of the RSA's Great Recovery team to Scotland and combine it with the skills and knowledge of our fellowship in order to help Scotland move towards a circular economy."

The workshops will take place at the Architecture and Design School (A+DS) in Edinburgh on Monday, 2 February (12.30pm-5pm), and at the MAKLab in Glasgow on Tuesday, 3 of February (10am-3pm).

Find out more about the Great Recovery workshops.

Six-month engagement on the circular economy

The Scottish Government, through the work of Zero Waste Scotland, has been increasingly focused on bringing about the circular economy, and last week launched a ‘six-month period of engagement and debate on the opportunities of a more circular economy’.

This engagement began with the release of the 'Circular Economy Scotland' report, produced by the Green Alliance with support from the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (SCDI), which identified the ‘unique strengths that Scotland has to lead and unlock economic opportunities’ related to the circular economy in the areas of: oil and gas; food and drink; and finance.

Earlier this week, Scotland’s Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead officially opened the new Scottish Institute of Remanufacturing at the University of Strathclyde, which aims to ‘keep increasingly scarce resources in productive use as long as possible’ and promote the practice of remanufacturing. This involves taking products or components that have reached their end of life, performing a series of steps to bring them back up to ‘as new’ specifications, and providing the new, remanufactured product with a warranty to match.

The All-Party Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group (APSRG) has estimated that the UK’s remanufacturing sector is worth £2.4 billion, with the potential to increase to £5.6 billion with further uptake.