I have been working on plans for a circular economy ‘wiki’ and case study database for a few years, and wondered if OSCEDays members might be interested in supporting this. Whilst researching my A Circular Economy Handbook for Business and Supply Chains Uploading… https://www.koganpage.com/product/supply-chains-for-a-circular-economy-9780749476755, I created a database to collect good examples, and now have over 400 different ‘stories’ covering different industry sectors and stages of the supply chain from across the world (and lots more waiting in my email inbox!).
Many of these are start-ups and SMEs, which I think is very exciting, proving that (a) it’s viable and (b) you don’t need a big R&D budget. I have discussed the idea with a few organisations, everyone thinks it’s a good idea but no one wanted to ‘own’ it, so I either need to find a suitable backer or try to make it ‘crowd-sourced’.
I don’t want to ‘own’ it, but would like to help develop it, and have my name associated with it. I have invested a lot of time in the research, in thinking about it, and creating a workable database structure so it is easily searchable with (I think) sensible categories to organise the different aspects of ‘circularity’.
The issue with the existing sites (including Circulate, EMF, Circular Economy Club, consultant sites etc) is that they are not easily searchable, and focus on big corporate stories. My vision is for something that helps answer the question “what can I do with xxxx waste” or “what examples are there in YY sector, for this kind of product, etc”. A kind of global ‘one stop shop’ for the circular economy. It could have links to case studies etc on other websites, but crucially contain all the key data in one place to make it easier to search. It could also be linked to the detail design documentation from these ‘Docu-Days’
A critical point for me is that it should be open-sourced, to ensure credibility, transparency and trust. There may need to be a small user fee to fund the platform and verification/maintenance (though ideally it would be funded through grants, corporate supporters etc), but users should be able to load their own data, and comment/flag up any issues with their own or other companies data. I’ve got further ideas on those aspects.
I have experience in building a comprehensive knowledge share platform in my role at DHL Supply Chain for our sales and operations teams, with a detailed ‘services’ database.
What do you think…???
Category? There it is probably easier to find for circular food enthusiasts. You can link to it from the Toronto category.