The Resource Efficiency Circular Economy Industry Coalition (RECEIC), an industry-led and industry-driven initiative to promote global resource efficiency and circular economy practices, was publicly launched this year at the G20 Environment and Climate meeting in Chennai, India. The coalition was launched by India's Minister of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change, Yadav, in the presence of the European Union Commissioner for Environment and government officials from Canada, France, Italy, Denmark, Mauritius, and the United Arab Emirates.
Thirty-nine multinational companies from various sectors, including steel, consumer goods, beverages, electronics, information technology, automation, and manufacturing, joined the coalition as founding members. "It gives me great pleasure to congratulate RECEIC's 39 founding members for their commitment and willingness to step forward and join this coalition. They represent a wide range of companies, from global multinational giants to start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises, spanning a broad spectrum of sectors, from manufacturing to waste collection, sorting, and recycling," said Minister Yadav, adding "as a collaborative platform, RECEIC aims to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and sustainable practices among participating industries.
"Amidst the crucial challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, we are at a pivotal moment that has the potential to trigger action and introduce sustainable solutions, which will safeguard the well-being of our planet and future generations. This also allows us to catalyze positive change and usher in a new era of sustainable development," Yadav added.
The industry coalition aims to promote collaborations at the highest level, focusing on generating partnerships across sectors and different value chains, including high-value, high-volume industries; fostering collaborative innovations, technology development, and field actions; reducing the costs of transitioning to circularity; facilitating direct investments, project structuring and development of financing lines; and enabling global discoveries by leveraging international platforms.
To overcome obstacles to the development of the circular economy and unlock the potential for collaboration between different actors, the global coalition will focus on three priority areas: partnerships, technology cooperation, and financing to promote circular activities.
Partnerships for impact
RECEIC will bring together "high-impact" initiatives to scale them up across multiple sectors and countries. Coalition members will discuss joint initiatives and interventions, sharing best practices to promote the circular economy. Through facilitating dialogues between different industry players (e.g., steel producers, cement producers, etc.), the coalition should also work to promote better management of waste streams, focusing on creating a stable supply chain and infrastructure for materials recovery/recycling. In addition, RECEIC will support knowledge development programs, such as training courses and knowledge exchange, to improve circularity along the value chain.
We are improving technological capabilities and collaborations.
Through structured and targeted dialogues, the coalition will explore potential collaborations between companies to identify technology and innovation gaps to focus on. The discussions could create opportunities for interaction with emerging companies and start-ups active in the circular economy, identifying innovative solutions. The coalition will launch assessments along the entire value chain of some strategic sectors, mapping production and consumption costs and environmental and socio-economic impacts. On this basis, evaluating investments in the circular context will be possible. According to RECEIC, technological partnerships will focus on interventions to improve circularity through the six R's: redesign, reduce, reuse, regenerate, repair, and recycle.
Investments of scale
Access to finance is critical to increasing circularity in the production and consumption of resources. Therefore, the third pillar of the coalition will focus on mobilizing concessional finance and attracting investors for research and technology development. RECEIC will collaborate with public and private funders to facilitate the deployment of resources in circular economy projects and develop infrastructure, pilot projects, regional programs, and sectoral partnerships.