These 17 innovators are helping accelerate the transition to a global circular economy

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum.

Author: Wesley Spindler, Senior Manager & Circulars Program Director, Accenture Strategy & Emmeline Cardozo, Business Strategy Consultant, Accenture

• The Circulars Accelerator launched its applications for its second year on UpLink, the World Economic Forum’s open innovation platform.
• The Circulars Accelerator, a programme led by Accenture in partnership with Anglo American and Ecolab, is looking to source innovative solutions that advance the transition to a global circular economy.
• The circular economy, which aims at reducing and eliminating waste and continuing to use safe resources, can help us create a more sustainable world.

The Circulars Accelerator programme is advancing the global transition to a more circular economy. The accelerator plays a central role in boosting circular innovation across the globe, connecting innovators and organisations that are prioritising the route to a circular economy.

This year, close to 400 solutions across 75 countries were submitted on UpLink for The Circulars Accelerator programme. Each of these were carefully reviewed and assessed by a panel of experts from across the circular ecosystem to select this cohort of 17 innovators. Over the coming months, The Circulars Accelerator advisors and support network will work closely with this group to scale their impact through enabling collaboration and knowledge sharing between circular entrepreneurs, business leaders and one another to unlock partnership opportunities for circular innovation at scale. Last year’s cohort participated in over 120 advisory connections and 25 potential commercial opportunities were born out of the program.

Here are The Circulars Accelerator 2022 cohort members who are scaling their circular solutions and accelerating the global transition to a more sustainable world:

Aquacycl has developed a modular, onsite wastewater treatment technology that reduces up to 90% of organic carbon and reduces wastewater management costs by 20% to 60%. The technology can then generate direct electricity from ultra-high strength organic wastewater.

Done Properly is a biotechnology company with a patent-pending proprietary fermentation technology which upcycles industrial by-products into a new generation of 100% natural ingredients.

ECOLOO is an award-winning, patented, off-grid, water-free and energy-free toilet. ECOLOO makes use of bacterial culture to process human waste into odour-free and sanitized fertilizer.

GreenPlat is a technology company that offers an online Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) software, accelerating sustainable production and reverse logistics management.

Green Mining has developed an intelligent reverse logistics technology to recover post-consumer packaging before it reaches landfill, tracking material flows digitally to efficiently retrieve post-consumer packaging and bring it back into the production cycle.

I-Drop designs, builds and installs self-service, purified and connected refill drinking water dispensers based on circular economy principles.

Kudoti offers a digital platform that tracks waste supply chains end-to-end in real time, matching it with demand from recyclers to boost recycling rates.

Lizee provides software as a service (SaaS) and certified logistics services for brands and retailers to quickly deploy and scale their most powerful re-commerce offers.

Mr. Green Africa has built a tech-driven plastics recycling system which recycles plastic-waste into high-quality raw materials.

Mycocyle is a patent-pending Process as a Service (PaaS) using fungi to remove toxins from landfill-bound waste, creating a renewable biomaterial that can be used to manufacture new products and reduce carbon output.

Polycare is a circular construction company, which licences the technology to produce ‘Polyblocks’, reusable, zero-waste building blocks made of circular inputs and stronger than conventional concrete.

Queen of Raw is a blockchain enabled marketplace for deadstock fabric, connecting underutilized textile resources with demand while reducing costs, carbon emissions and waste.

RE develop smart returnable packaging as a service that brands can lease, and consumers can use and return for reuse or refill instead of adding to landfill.

Reflauntis a technology company that helps brands and consumers to resell their branded clothing without having to leave the brand’s website.

Rice Afrika is a technology platform that connects all stakeholders across the Nigerian rice value chain, providing rural farmers with modern, eco-friendly, and efficient harvesting machines to cut exploitation and waste.

Saathihas developed a patented technology to make biodegradable sanitary pads using banana and bamboo fibres taken from agricultural waste.

Topolyticsis a data aggregation and analytics business that helps organisations analyse and track their waste, helping to make the world’s waste visible, verifiable and valuable.

Learn more about these innovators on UpLink.