The Circular Industries Talks are organized every second Wednesday at the Circular Industries Hub. In this edition, Arnold Tukker, Professor of Industrial Ecology at Leiden University expands on the Circular Circuits project, in his talk, titled: Circular Circuits: Material flows and improvement hotspots in the Dutch electronics chain. Curious for more? Take a look at the recording at the bottom of this page.
Circular Circuits is a major project funded by the Dutch Research Council running from 2023-2028, executed by 5 universities, 2 universities of applied science, TNO, M2I, and some 20 users (companies and authorities). The ambition of the project is making the electronic chain circular. This talk focuses on the work of Leiden University-CML in mapping the material flows of electrical and electronic products, waste generation, next to the environmental benefits of improvement options in production, design, and waste management of electronics.
Electrical and electronic equipment is the fastest-growing waste stream of our time. Think of everything with IT: laptops, data centres, sensors. They also contain lots of Critical Raw Materials. Letting these go to waste is a shame. We hence must move to a circular electronics system.
A key problem is that collection targets for Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) are set in a rough way (the target is currently set to 65% of the amount of products put on the market in the last 3 years). This is not working for products for which the market is expanding quickly and for products that have a long life, such as PV panels. It is also not working for mobile phones, which after a primary use of 3 years are kept in reserve at home for years. Hence, getting insight into true flows and stocks is essential for proper WEEE management, as is an assessment of optimal production, design and management of E-waste.
Curious about the whole story? Listen to Arnold Tukker in the Circular Industries talks.
The Circular Industries talks
The goal of the Circular Industries talks is to share knowledge across Leiden, Delft and Erasmus and to complement and deepen the knowledge already available within the Circular Industries Hub. The talks are organized on Wednesday morning from 10:00 to 11:00. The talks are online (Microsoft Teams).