1 April 2024, Country Overshoot Day for NL – foolish not in invest in the Circular Economy
April 1st 2024 was the Netherlands’ Country Overshoot Day. This means* that if the whole world would live like the people in The Netherlands, humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in 2024 would almost equal what four Earths can regenerate in this year.
To avoid further overconsumption of our planet’s resources and the its consequences turning against us, we need to take action! We need to be more economical with what the earth has to offer us. In a Circular Economy we reuse, refurbish, repair, and recycle objects and materials in order to avoid wasting and replacing them with material that’s newly mined of reaped from the earth.
The importance of analytical science and technology as key enabling technology for the circular economy is beyond measure. For example, high-value recycling of plastics is only possible if different types of materials in the plastics’ stream are identified and separated. To give another example: Trust between business partners in the circular economy requires development of standards for quality of used objects and materials and concomitant methods for verification.
Therefore, COAST recently initiated a Community of Practice for the Circular Economy (CoP-CE). There, we bring together participants with circularity-related analytical challenges and potential analytical solution providers. In addition, our CoP-CE is a place to unite analytical professionals who wish to put their own house in order and stimulate circularity of their analytical practice. Companies with circularity-related analytical challenges are invited to contact our innovation agents.
CoP-CE will organize open as well as members-only events to further foster contact on analytical challenges in the circular economy. For example, on May 7th we organize a webinar on Textile recycling, Analysis and Digital product passports.
* For the definition of and more information on Country Overshoot Day see https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days/ . For more information on Earth Overshoot Day go to overshootday.org .