350 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide in a year. To ensure that this does not also result in 350 million tons of waste at the same time, a circular economy can manage these plastics in a circle and thus conserve resources and the environment. However, this change to a circular plastics economy requires systemic, technical and social innovations - a main concern of the Fraunhofer Cluster CCPE. For two days, international experts and researchers from the six member institutes will present strategies, research results and implementation projects at the Munich Marriot Hotel in Munich. The goal is to accelerate the change to a circular plastics economy with presentations and international discussions. Program details and a registration form can be found on the website of Fraunhofer CCPE.

With the forum, Fraunhofer CCPE as host in cooperation with TNO and Circular Valley® offers industry, politics, science and society a platform to exchange ideas on solutions and innovations. "At the Summit, I am looking forward to discussing, for example, how we can raise awareness of all the principles of the circular economy, i.e. the ten R-strategies, and how industry, science and society can work together in the transformation to a plastics circular economy with long-term impact," explains Prof. Manfred Renner, who took over the leadership of Fraunhofer CCPE in August 2022, "Cross-industry collaboration - very local, but also regional and international - is the prerequisite for a successful plastics circular economy. At the Summit, stakeholders from all sectors will meet and network in order to rethink the plastics value chain together. "

Circular business models, new technologies and changing plastics formulations

The Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence Circular Plastics Economy CCPE has been conducting research in the three areas of "Materials", "Systems" and "Business" since 2018. The cooperation of the six Fraunhofer institutes IAP, ICT, IML, IVV, LBF and UMSICHT creates a multi-stakeholder approach that bundles various competencies. The researchers' results to date range from innovative approaches for circular business models to intelligent collection, sorting, and recycling technologies to new formulations for circular polymers and compounds to enable multiple recycling cycles. These include, for example, the newly developed assessment tool CRL^® , which companies can use to self-assess the maturity of products or product systems with regard to the circular economy. In doing so, the tool tests a product against the principles of the circular economy in the areas of product design, product service system, end-of-life management and circular economy.