Going from kilos to tons: the effects of waste shipment regulations on research and innovation – removing hurdles to accelerate a circular future

As accelerator session of the World Circular Economy Forum 2023, this event takes a deep dive into challenges businesses run into when moving waste across borders for research and innovation purposes and how they can be overcome.

Background

Research and innovation are critical to the transition to a circular economy. But what are the constraints and difficulties faced by businesses in this field and how can we move forward?

Waste is a key raw material in the transition to a circular economy. In order to develop and pilot circular recycling and recovery operations, “waste” or rather raw material has to move across borders for testing. While lab testing only requires a few kilos of waste, for pilot runs, several tons of “waste” are required.

Such amounts of raw material are often required in order to operate pilots in sufficient time for obtaining representative results as well as to enable performing equipment tests with equipment suppliers for the design of the full-scale plant. Tests are also needed in order to optimise the equipment size (e.g. filter surface area, sizing of filters) and in many cases also to enable the specific design of the equipment such as evaporators, driers, solid handling equipment, etc.

About this session

In this session, we will take a closer look at the Ash2Phos process that was pioneered by Ragn-Sells Group that provides clean phosphorous, as a case where research and innovation was hampered due to waste shipment regulations. Phosphorous is a critical raw material and plays a critical role for food security. Learn why trade in this example remains very difficult and burdensome for companies – from research to its end-use, there are many lost opportunities for this circular solution that could significantly increase food security.