Circular economy

Meet the pioneers who are paving the way for a circular economy where we recycle more and throw away less.

Theme about circular economy
If we become better at recycling, we can both reduce the amount of waste and extract fewer of the earth's limited resources.

28 March is the date for Denmark’s ‘Earth Overshoot Day’ in 2022. This is the day on which we will have used all the resources we can permit ourselves this year to avoid overshooting the biocapacity of the Earth. To achieve a sustainable balance, the date should fall on or after 31 December. By comparison, the global ‘Earth Overshoot Day’ fell on 29 July in 2021.

The dates have been calculated by the Global Footprint Network think tank, which—since 2003—has measured the ecological footprint of global society to highlight the extent of our exploitation of the Earth’s resources.

One way of reducing resource consumption is to reuse, recycle, or utilize our existing materials or products. This is called circular economy.

In the circular economy, resources are utilized better by rethinking everything from business to design, production, sales, and consumption, so that materials can be included in new products, reused, shared, or sold as a service. The ambition is that the circular economy is to replace the linear economy, which we also know as the ‘use and discard’ culture.

On the following pages, you can read about research projects at DTU that can promote a circular economy and thus help us make our resources last a little longer.