Skip to content

Entrepreneurs Track 4: Closing the Life-Cycle of Plastic Waste with Inclusive Business Approaches

 

 

The session presented a methodological framework to identifying business opportunities and designing resulting projects for closing the life cycle of waste.

Sofia Diaz (project manager at Bonafont-Danone, Mexico),  responsible to make sure that all the plastics put out in the market by Bonafont have a second life.  She presented an inclusive recycling project in the city of Mexicali (Baja California) to secure the supply of PET bales in a socially responsible manner. The main challenge they face is not economical, but the working conditions of the waste pickers, and the changing legislative conditions due to different political administrations in Mexico.

 

 

Diego Angelino, coordinates the project Emerging Markets, presented the Guidelines on sustainable value chains (emsdialogues.org), that helps companies to replicate different projects on sustainability in emerging markets. You can see here his presentation.

Juliana Mutis Marín, general director of Minka-dev, a company for innovative business solutions for environmental needs, presented a Toolkit to apply, evaluate and analyze business opportunities for closing the life cycle of wastes. She emphasized the importance of using a systemic approach, understanding that systems are not linear dynamics, and how the understanding of vicious circles is the starting point to design the dynamics and which decisions we have to take to burst those vicious circles. In order to apply the Toolkit, she offered the expertise of Minka-dev. Find here her first and second presentation.

The participants divided in 4 groups in order to discuss and propose solutions for 4 materials: Plastic bottles, fishing nets, carton collected from informal pickers and food waste from supermarkets