10th European Forum on Eco-Innovation
Location: The ICC, Broad Street, Birmingham B1 2EA, UK - Birmingham, England
The event:
The 10th European Forum will bring together key players in business, academia, finance, policy and green groups to focus on materials security and sustainable materials management. The event will present business case studies on sustainable materials management, encourage innovation through cross fertilisation between disciplines and sectors, and identify and prioritise key issues that need to be addressed by government and EU action. The Forum will propose priority areas for action and play a key part in securing research through Research Councils and EU calls.
The issues:
The focus of EU eco-innovation is shifting towards a dematerialisation of the economy. An EU sustainable resource policy will establish an economy which uses finite and renewable resources efficiently and responsibly recycles strategically important materials and develops alternatives to the consumption of scarce resources or materials which cause high environmental impacts during extraction, use and disposal. Key debates will include: market and legal frameworks necessary to support a resource-efficient economy; eco-innovations that address materials security – substitution, minimisation of materials use, closing loops, etc – and reduce environmental impacts; and the role of green procurement in the public and private sectors to promote resource efficiency.