The future German government has presented its coalition agreement. It contains good approaches to the circular economy. The National Circular Economy Strategy adopted in December is to be implemented pragmatically and a key issues paper with measures that can be implemented in the short term is to be drawn up on this basis.

In order to strengthen Germany as an industrial location, the future coalition partners want to accelerate the transformation to a circular economy. The coalition parties define their goal as reducing the consumption of primary raw materials as much as possible and making better use of domestic and European resources. The chemical recycling of plastics is to be integrated into the existing waste hierarchy.

Circular Valley is already working on projects for concrete implementation

The coalition's plans also concern three top projects that the Circular Valley Foundation and its project groups are already working on as part of the cooperation between North Rhine-Westphalia and Flanders (Belgium).

The CDU/CSU and SPD have committed themselves to Germany as a chemical location in the coalition agreement and want to make Germany the world's most innovative chemical hub. “ After important concepts of the chemical industry such as the Verbund concept have already been developed in Germany in the past, it is now up to us to create a circular chemistry that is able to turn post-consumer products back into high-quality raw materials and thus close material cycles in this area,” says Dr. Carsten Gerhardt, Chairman of the Circular Valley Foundation.

The future coalition also wants to take a step forward in battery production. It will promote the development of battery cell production, including the extraction of raw materials, recycling and mechanical and plant engineering, and advance research into batteries and energy storage technologies. “We welcome the fact that the future German government wants to expand battery research and production in the long term,” says Carsten Gerhardt. In the short term, however, it makes sense to rely on ready-made and inexpensive batteries from abroad.

“A key challenge for the upcoming years will be to optimally integrate these batteries into our energy systems.” This could help to smooth out power peaks from renewable energies. Batteries from all over the world are also interesting for Europe from a recycling perspective. “As a continent with few raw materials, we can use battery recycling to obtain important components that are important both for battery production and for other products and use them here in Europe,” says Carsten Gerhardt.

Digitalization is an important tool for circular construction

The third important topic that the future German government also wants to focus on is circular construction. To this end, the increased use of recycled building materials is to be made possible. The Circular Valley Foundation's “Circular Construction” project group aims to create exemplary use cases for the use of mineral substitute building materials. Numerous startups from the Circular Economy Accelerator program have also developed business models for circular construction, such as the startup Polycare, which produces durable and reusable building elements with less material and less energy, or Vlastic from Flanders (Belgium), which uses bio-based materials to produce elements for interior fittings, for example.

Startups such as Madaster and Concular, also alumni of the Accelerator programme, are working in the field of digitalization in the construction industry. Both are developing systems that make it possible to digitize and catalog materials used in existing buildings and create a marketplace to make building materials reusable.

Because startups have particularly high potential to contribute to a shift towards a circular economy, the Circular Valley Foundation welcomes the plans of the future German government to provide more support for young companies. “Startups are the hidden champions and DAX companies of tomorrow,” says the coalition agreement. That is why the government wants to improve the framework conditions for these young companies - for example by simplifying the startup process.

“We are pleased that the circular economy is included in many key chapters of the coalition agreement and that it has been recognized in a wide variety of fields that the largest and most important industrial transformation is imminent,” says Carsten Gerhardt. “Now we need to develop a coherent and implementation-oriented concept from the many good individual ideas.”

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