NEXT - Towards a circular economy

Reinforce the industry competitiveness while promoting circular economy in order to tackle the issues related to the dependency, availability and cost of resource and also to limit environmental pressure caused by the Walloon industry The activities of the NEXT Program are based on 3 pillars: 1) Industry - Organization of workshops with the industry in order to raise awareness, to detect potential synergies and to work on all the aspects of circular economy: design, reverse logistics, industrial synergies and new economic models. - Development of a database (updated on a voluntary basis by the industrial enterprises) as a tool for the detection of industrial synergies. This database identifies available raw materials and by-products stocks on the Walloon territory and contributes to build partnerships for industrial synergies. - Individual and multi-partnership support to enterprises in order to build their operational and strategic projects towards a circular economy. 2) Education / Training - Concrete actions to educate and train students for the challenges of tomorrow. - Awareness raising about circular economy. - Creation of transdisciplinary collaborations to offer a cross-cutting approach in problem solving. 3) International Network - Access to a network for exchange of best practices and available techniques via the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. This network also gives the opportunity to demonstrate the Walloon industry capabilities of developing solutions towards circular economy. 125 people showed their interest in the continuation of the process after the roadshow in 2012. According to the debriefing, people were generally satisfied with the organization and conduct of the workshops dedicated to industrial synergies (2012-2013) and considered it was an interesting exercise to understand the importance of a systemic vision. Regarding partnerships detected at the end of the workshops 2012-2013: - 115 detected - 27 studied - 5 are currently being set up. In 2013-2014, the workshops have been more focused on specific areas of a circular economy. All the participating CEO's have given a very positive feedback and some of them have already benefited from individual support.