III Estonian Zero Waste Conference – yes, circular systems are a reality!
On Oct 2nd to 3rd, 2024 the Estonian Zero Waste Conference was held already a 3rd time, with the promising title „Circular systems are a reality“. After workshops and discussions we concluded that yes, while imperfect and with still lots of help needed, some circular systems are already here.
Our conference is becoming a nice annual tradition that brings together the zero waste community, both from Estonia and elsewhere, from municipalities, businesses and academia. Apart from exploring the newest findings and experiences in circular economy and zero waste solutions, our aim is to offer a space to connect and find support from each other in our common goal of less wasted resources. This year, we had around 70 people from 8 countries participating. We continued our tradition to be hosted by higher education institutions, this year at Estonian University of Life Sciences.
It’s good to see that some mindset change is already happening. When talking about data which is in the centre of zero waste and resource management, on some levels it is already considered a norm that decisions should be made based on data. On the other hand, actually taking those decisions is something yet to be done in many organisations.
We also see that the word „zero waste“ still feels like an impossible or unattainable goal to many. The conference was good place to remind that it is more about the journey than reaching absolute zero, it’s about optimizing our production and being mindful what we need to consume. Even the term „zero waste“ itself is not meant that there is no surplus left but rather designing systems where we don’t create unnecessary things in the first place.
When it comes to circular systems being already a reality or not, the answer is still „it depends“. We see several new business models emerging, but also struggling to survive in the lineaar economy landscape. We can see many local community solutions working. But for sure many bits are still missing for circular systems to thrive on a larger scale. In the words of Janek Balõnski from Ringo, company offering reusable tableware service: „We have excellent delivery services all over the world, what we are missing are the return systems.“
The two conference days were filled with many ideas and thoughts, which will continue between the participants also afterwards. This year, apart from our regular workshops and panel discussions, we also held a Living Library session, to introduce real living zero waste examples and stories from across the Europe. The Living Library was welcomed very warmly and it was nice to see buzzing conversations here and there. This gives us confidence to also organise it again in our future events. If you missed the conference and want to know what was it all about, read it from here.
To best summarise our conference is to quote one of the workshop leaders and Living Library „books“ – Kaisa Karjalainen, the director of Mission Zero Academy:
„The event was called a conference but it was far from the regular listening to speaches and waiting for the coffee break to get a chance to talk. Humans learn when they put together their thoughts, participate and ask questions. The programme of this event was designed with this principle in mind and sets a new standard for conferences. I look forward to participating in more events like this. I feel like it kept all the participants energizer throughout the two days, allowed for better connections to be formed and more genuine learning to take place.“
If you are curious to know, what makes our conference special and how we design it, check out this blog post.
The conference was organised with the support of the European Commission Represenation in Estonia, Estonian Business and Innovation Agency, City of Tartu, Association of Municipalities of Tartu County, Estonian University of Life Sciences, and co-financed with the funds from European Regional Development Fund, EUK, CURE+ and TREASoURcE.
📸 Check out the photo gallery here.
