Guest Bio
Matthew Claxton is the global director of sustainability at Plug and Play Tech Center, an innovation and accelerator platform that connects entrepreneurs with investors.
Episode Summary
Host Vic Marinich is joined by Matthew Claxton, global director of sustainability at Plug & Play Tech Center, to talk about circularity trends and best practices.
Main Points
- Circularity is about re-utilizing resources that have already been used once. It could be recapturing waste heat from different types of equipment or recapturing energy that’s being consumed for different water treatment plants or industrial plants. (5:15)
- Large corporations are showing greater interest in circularity and investing in early-stage companies that are developing technologies to enable circularity initiatives. (9:30)
- Among the metrics that can be used to track progress toward circularity: how much material gets recycled, jobs created from circularity efforts, money saved and revenue generated from circularity initiatives. (10:20)
- When creating circularity initiatives, key stakeholders include insurance companies, investors and government agencies. (12:00)
- Educating internal team members on the benefits of circularity and getting the buy-in from all relevant business units is critical to the success of circularity projects. Scaling up new technologies and initiatives takes time, patience is necessary. (14:10)
- A growing trend in circularity is carbon capture – recycling carbon for use in fuels and greener chemicals. Much investment has been made but the technology will take time to scale up. Electric vehicle battery recycling is another growing area. (17:50)
- The Inflation Reduction Act gave a boost to sustainability initiatives in the U.S. The U.S. had been lagging behind Europe but with the additional funds available, more start-ups are entering the circularity space. (21:40)
- Entrepreneurs looking to enter the circularity space shouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes. It takes trial and error to determine the exact pathway to developing and scaling new technologies. (26:40)
Links
Learn more about circularity: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-circularity
Learn more about Plug and Play’s work: https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/
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For more information and additional episodes of the EnVisioneering Exchange podcast, visit https://www.danfoss.com/en-us/about-danfoss/insights-for-tomorrow/envisioneering-exchange/