The webinar aims to contribute to a shared understanding of the scope of the circular economy, objectives, principles, practices and taxonomy of knowledge, by actively engaging several regional and global knowledge platforms and stakeholders on the circular economy in Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America.
As the circular economy gains global momentum, the number of knowledge products on this topic is growing. A significant challenge is the alignment among knowledge products on best practices, with frequent overlaps in concepts, practices, implementation objectives and target audiences. This issue arises from different interpretations of the ambitions, concepts and operational practices of the circular economy, which differ in terminology, scope, priority sectors, stakeholder groups and cultural differences. These challenges can also lead to a fragmented approach to managing and disseminating the knowledge, skills and information needed to strengthen actions towards a green and circular economy.
The webinar aims to develop a common operational framework for a circular economy knowledge taxonomy (categories, tags, content types) by actively engaging with different regional and global circular economy knowledge and stakeholder platforms.
The event was attended by over 100 participants from different European countries.
Prof. Dr. Andrea Andrejević Panić attended the event, primarily because the main goal of the project presented at the webinar is to develop recommendations for public policy makers, as in the case of the EDUCIRC2022 project. Measurement methodologies are important for measuring progress and changes that have occurred in terms of the progress of the green transition of the Republic of Serbia. The conclusions from the meeting are of a general nature and some of them suggest that without reliable measurement methods it is not possible to measure change, and therefore there is no basis for quality management of the entire process of transition to a circular economy. Also, it is of great importance to find means and ways to implement sustainable methods in the economy and achieve SDG goals. Supporting regional development is of exceptional importance for circularity in economic activities, as well as networking the academic milieu with the public and private sectors. The most important conclusion for the development of the circular economy is the process of educating entrepreneurs and young people as well as adequate and synchronous adoption of policies and strategies, but education at the local level remains a very important factor for creating innovation and practical solutions and creating common practices, which could be implemented in national laws. The possibilities for creating solutions should be developed in the direction of creating new entrepreneurs and introducing regular education on priority topics for young people and women as well as the import and export of domestic products, which have common characteristics at the international level. However, networking at the international level requires overcoming language barriers as well as using internationally available funds in order to better develop public policies in this area. The use of digital tools and the use of AI tools as well as knowledge from robotics would have a great purpose for creating unified products but also for facilitating the monitoring of databases and networking on a global level, in order to identify all information and from which parts and levels of the economy it comes in order to facilitate the monitoring of the process and the transition of the economy and the economy from the classical economic model to the circular economy. Hence the need for harmonization of data with the standards that are prescribed as this is extremely important for the interpretation and harmonization of the process.
The importance of such data harmonization would accelerate the Mapping process and the balancing of barriers, but also a clearer and faster definition of priorities in order to make assessments and changes or additions when drafting Strategies at the national level. This is also related to solving current problems in the economy and the economy, such as reducing CO2 emissions, recycling in production processes, etc. At the same time, conditions are created for promoting good business practices and examples of good practice in economies that can be used to create joint initiatives to address climate change issues and adopt business models that would also benefit customers, with emphasis on setting priorities and a series of innovations for the most important issues such as waste management (food, plastics, textile industries). The discussion continued on the importance of circular economy topics and their connection to waste management processes, using examples from the food industry, bioplastics, and textile waste.
