Do you remember the wooden chairs in your school? Each and every one of us has sat on such a chair, without thinking about where it comes from or what happens to it when it reaches the end of its life. Ideally, it comes from wood from an Austrian forest, is debarked and debranched in a sawmill, and its valuable raw materials are processed elsewhere. A carpentry workshop shapes the wood into a chair. After hundreds of children have sat on the chair, the wood is further processed, for example, into another piece of furniture. Only when the wood can no longer be used is it burned and gives us warmth.<\/p>\n
THAT is circular economy. Each component of a natural raw material is used, then reprocessed or recycled until it reaches the end of its life cycle. However, our current economic system looks different. We consume more resources than can grow back. We produce products and when we no longer need them, we throw them away and buy something new. This has immense effects on CO2 emissions and makes us dependent on finite resources. Our economy is decoupled from nature.<\/p>\n
Therefore, the circular economy is an important part of the European Green Deal. At the panel “Gamechanger Circular Economy and Bioeconomy” on Thursday, March 16, 2023, at the salz21 innovation festival, experts and users from the economy spoke about how we can move from our current linear economy to a circular one. The panel was organized by Innovation Salzburg.<\/p>\n
The construction industry, for example, shows how materials can be reused or used differently. Big changes are coming to the construction industry, as it is responsible for 30 to 40 percent of emissions. But there is another way: Salzburg Wohnbau is currently building a building that is 80 percent constructed from reused materials. This works by recycling concrete from old buildings or reusing wood.<\/p>\n
In addition to the circular economy, bioeconomy is also a topic that many companies are dealing with. Bioeconomy means replacing artificial materials with natural ones. This is particularly challenging for food packaging. It is not only about reducing plastic packaging, but actually replacing it. In addition, strict hygiene regulations must be followed in the food sector. Meanwhile, this is best achieved with PET, which is why the food industry is highly dependent on it. Replacing PET is one of its biggest challenges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How to use resources efficiently, reuse them, or replace them with natural materials is what circular economy and bioeconomy are concerned with. Experts discussed what it takes to transition to a green economy during a panel at the salz21 innovation festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":7847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,68,70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-forschung-en","category-green-innovation-en","category-unternehmen-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-salzburg.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-salzburg.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-salzburg.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-salzburg.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-salzburg.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8466"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-salzburg.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8586,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-salzburg.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466\/revisions\/8586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-salzburg.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-salzburg.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-salzburg.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovation-salzburg.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}