Circular Economy

Data sharing solutions for Circular Economy

Code:

REACH-2021-THEMEDRIVEN-CEA_1

Domain:

Circular Economy

Description of the DVC THEME

The traditional linear economy consists of a simple linear value chain— source, design, produce, consume, and dispose. Circular economy answers a simple fundamental question: How can we capture more of the value lost in a traditional linear system? Circular economy tries to find ways to create loops in that linear supply chain to retain that value.
The circular economy requires top-down management and change across a company, including re-evaluating product design, business models, and the supply chain. At the core of those changes, data sharing among the different actors is of paramount importance [1]. Being such a theme quite recent, to the best of our knowledge, at the current time there is not open data available, as acknowledged by a Horizon call [2] to build a Common European Green Deal data space.

However, when data becomes available, we will still have to deal with the following data sharing problems: 1) data privacy and confidentiality among actors that do not necessarily trust each other; 2) data interoperability; and 3) data availability.

In this context, this DVC Theme proposes concrete challenges that exemplify those problems associated with the actual implementation of the circular economy.

  1. https://data.europa.eu/en/highlights/open-data-and-circular-economy
  2. https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/funding-calls/common-european-green-deal-data-space-provide-more-accessible-and-exploitable

Sub-challenges composing this experiment:

Expected global results:

Increase the awareness of the whole product production process to improve the design, the business model and the supply chain toward the circular economy framework.