How can we achieve sustainability for people and planet?
How can we make progress towards zero waste and sustainability?
Transitioning to a circular economy creates opportunities to make our societies more inclusive, accessible, and sustainable by bringing together the principles of social engagement and economic opportunity. From rethinking our relationship to resources to developing new methods of collaboration and community-building, circular economy has the potential to serve as a catalyst for regenerative social, economic, and environmental progress.
But where will these changes take place? What social and physical frames best support this fundamental transformation of citizen engagement? And what role can the stories of space play in defining our communities of tomorrow?
And what is a Repair Café and how can you start one?
A joint event with https://regeneratingsonora.org/
Matilda Jarbin is the sustainability manager at Godsinlösen Nordic AB (GIAB), whose business model is based on circular economy. GIAB is one of Sweden’s foremost examples of how the theory of the circular economy can be put into practice. With the knowledge and experience that Matilda has accumulated during the years she has been with and built up the company, she hopes to contribute with expertise to Cradlenet. She will work for the members of Cradlenet to start collaborating more and to make the organization’s activities more visible. In 2017, she was named one of Sweden’s top 33 sustainability talents.
Swedish Environmental Research Institute IVL waste expert Åsa Stenmarck has been appointed special investigator tasked with reviewing the possibilities of reducing negative environmental effects of plastic in Sweden.
Åsa has worked with waste and resource related projects for 18 years. She has over the years worked broadly with waste management issues, often on a systems level but with particular focus on circular economy and recycling. She has worked with waste flows from WEEE, food, plastics and textiles. 2018 she led the Swedish Governmental investigation on plastics – answering the question on “How to reach sustainable plastic use”. The later years her focus has also shifted from only waste to more resource flows and sustainable consumption.
Daan Weddepohl is a serial entrepreneur. He is the CEO and founder of a website and app called Peerby, which has active members all around the world. Through Peerby, you can borrow, share, and rent out household items in your neighbourhood. Peerby members create social capital, vastly reduce environmental impact, and invest in their local community.
Martine Postma (born 1970) is a Dutch environmentalist and former journalist. She is best known for introducing the concept of the Repair Café.
Martine was born in the Netherlands in 1970. She was a journalist until 2009. She wrote about sustainability and environmental issues, with a special focus on waste reduction and prevention. In 2009, she thought up the concept of Repair Café: free repair meetings where expert volunteers help less handy neighbours to fix beloved broken items. Martine organised the first Repair Café in October 2009. It became a big success. Afterwards, people across the Netherlands wanted to organise similar repair meetings in their community too. Martine then started the Repair Café International Foundation and has been busy spreading the Repair Café concept worldwide since. At this moment there are almost 2,000 local Repair Café groups in 35 countries across the globe. The number of Repair Cafés still grows every day.
Martine is an advocate for more repairable products and better care for products by their owners. She wants to help preserve repair skills in every-day society, for she believes that repairing is not only good for products and for the environment, it is also good for people. “When you succeed in repairing a broken item yourself, you feel strong and proud, and you realize that repairing is a normal thing to do. It is this mindset that we need for a sustainable future.”
Website: https://repaircafe.org/en.