CIRCULAR REPUBLIC

Forward is a decision. Yesterday at #Forum UnternehmerTUM 2026, 600 changemakers made it together. A day at Munich Urban Colab that covered a lot of ground: European competitiveness, trust between institutions and innovators, the shifting role of the state, and the realisation that the boundaries between sectors are dissolving faster than most strategies can keep up with. A few things that stayed with us: 🔷 Trust as the foundation. Especially between policy and industry. 🔷 "Every sector is becoming a space sector." A useful reframe, and one that applies well beyond space. 🔷 Connecting and empowering as a working philosophy, not a slogan, but a reminder that ecosystems are built person by person, conversation by conversation. Which is also why it felt right to see our #CircularityCatalyst Program on the screens throughout the day. The program is built on the same conviction: that the circular transition is carried by the people driving it from inside their companies. Over 9 months, Catalysts work alongside external coaches, experts and peers from across the different fields of circular economy, combined with a leadership development approach that builds the skills to drive change from within. Great to reconnect with so many of our partners, meet new faces from across the ecosystem, and share the day with all of you. Thank you to UnternehmerTUM for convening the room that makes this kind of momentum possible. #CircularEconomy #ForumUnternehmerTUM #CircularityCatalyst #EuropeanCompetitiveness #IndustrialTransformation

Two transformations, one playbook: digitalisation and circularity can't be solved separately. Yesterday, our Co-Founder Susanne Kadner joined the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection NeRess network conference "Digitalisation as a Driver of the Circular Economy" with 120 representatives from politics, industry, and start-ups. Three takeaways from the leadership panel with Bettina Bartz, Dr. Marianne Kuhlmann, and Lisa Vazansky, moderated by Armando García Schmidt: 🔷 Circular economy and digitalisation can't be separated. As Dr. Marianne Kuhlmann put it: both transformations reinforce each other - and share the same organisational challenges. 🔷 The Mittelstand can move fast. Bettina Bartz emphazised quick experimentation without long alignment cycles is a real competitive advantage. 🔷 Change starts with people. As Lisa Vazansky put it: training only works when it delivers concrete value for participants. That's exactly the insight we built into the #CircularityCatalyst Programme together with Bertelsmann Stiftung. Susanne summed it up in one line: circular economy is industrial policy. And its relationship with digitalisation runs both ways. The known part: digital tools, such as product passports, data spaces and AI, are the precondition for working material loops. The less-discussed part: the digital industry itself depends on vulnerable supply chains. That's exactly what our report "Circularity in the Quantum Industry", launched this week with kiutra and the European Quantum Industry Consortium (QuIC), makes visible: quantum computers rely on niobium, gallium, and rare earths, with import dependencies close to 100% and recycling rates below 1%. If you want to build the digital industry of the future, you have to think it circular from day one. The same resilience logic runs through our new Circular Economy #StartupLandscape2026: 2,800 start-ups across Europe, over 55% of global circular economy funding flowing into our region. But only 15% work on material loops, and just 5% on critical raw materials. Plenty of room to grow, especially in AI-driven sorting, automated disassembly, and recovery technologies. To close, a line from State Secretary Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter that stayed with us: "Have courage, stand up." Words that fit this phase of transformation well. Thanks to her for the opening address and the announcement of a new BMUKN Competence Centre for the Digital Product Passport, and to Martin Vogt, Roxana Nasrollahi-Kermani, and Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers for the invitation and organisation. And of course thanks to everyone who joined yesterday! Photos: ©BMUKN/Bernd Lammel

Assembly is highly optimized, while disassembly is still mostly manual: On July 1st, 2026, we're hosting our 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐲 at the Munich Urban Colab, bringing together ~50 startups, corporates, and research partners to tackle one of the most critical bottlenecks in scaling circularity. Why automated disassembly? Recovering high-value components and critical raw materials, from electronics to EV batteries, is the gateway to a resilient European supply. Today, dismantling is labor-intensive, costly, and unsafe. Robotics and AI-driven sensing change that equation: they turn the "inverse assembly" challenge into a scalable industrial reality. What you can expect: 🔷 A clear read on the state of automated disassembly today 🔷 Real-world showcases from industry and pioneering startups 🔷 Impulse talks across industry, academia, and the public sector 🔷 A working session to map the "white spots" (where collaboration is needed most) 🔷 Curated networking across the European value chain If you're working on robotics, reverse logistics, urban mining, or critical raw material recovery: reach out to our colleague Julia Pantel and join us for the theme day!

The quantum sector is too fragmented to act firm by firm, and too strategically important to wait for scale. That's the structural problem behind every supply-chain conversation in the industry right now. Startups can't justify parallel investment in circularity. Order volumes are too small for supplier leverage. Subsystems arrive as black boxes - no bill of materials, no upstream disclosure. But the policy window is wide open: the EU Quantum Act is expected later in 2026, with a supply-chain resilience pillar. The Critical Raw Materials Act is in active implementation. Today at #QExpo, together with kiutra and he support of European Quantum Industry Consortium (QuIC), we're publishing 𝐂𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐦 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐲 - a structured analysis for a Circular Quantum Industry Alliance to coordinate material mapping, design pilots, and policy input across the European value chain. Thanks to Polina Ivanova, Niclas-Alexander Mauss, Tomek Schulz and Harris Mubeen for the work behind this report. Read the full report, link in the comments!

📣 Munich is bidding for the #OlympicGames in 2036, 2040 or 2044 — and explicitly positioning itself as the candidate for the first circular Games. 🥇 Oberbürgermeister Dominik Krause presented the updated bid concept this week — with #CircularEconomy as one of two dedicated "power projects": planning, construction, operations and legacy use of all Olympic infrastructure aligned with resource efficiency and circularity. Concretely: green infrastructure, climate-neutral materials, zero-waste concepts. The second power project is autonomous mobility. Three competitors are still in the race for Germany's national bid — Hamburg, Berlin and the Rhine-Ruhr region. The DOSB decides on September 26 in Baden-Baden. This is the kind of ambition the circular economy needs — embedded in infrastructure, not added as an afterthought. That's what we work on every day at CIRCULAR REPUBLIC. And Landeshauptstadt München is exactly the right place for what we're building because this city treats the circular economy as an infrastructure topic, not a niche topic. 🙌 Dear Dominik Krause — if #OlympicGames in #Munich go circular, we're in. 🤝 😊 👉 May 20: Munich's City Council votes. 👉 June 4: final bid to the DOSB. 👉 September 26: Germany decides. The countdown is on. #CircularEconomy #Munich #Olympics #CEKS #RKU 📸 (c) Tim Feller

This one is for our Finnish community 👋 In our #CircularStartupLandscape2026 analysis, Finland (next to Estonia) stands out – both in the number of startups (no of startups per million inhabitants) and in attracting circular economy funding (startup funding per capita) across Europe. Read more in the article linked in the comments. (don't worry—if you don't speak Finnish 😅 , the article is also available in English) Thanks to Uusiouutiset -lehti and Elina Saarinen 😊

💡 Germany’s industrial #CircularEconomy is not a “nice to have” – it is a core lever for competitiveness and resilience. ⚡ A new study by Circular Economy Initiative BDI and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) - presented at IFAT worldwide - shows that an ambitious industrial circular economy in Germany could unlock 👉 𝟖𝟖𝟎 𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝟐𝟎𝟒𝟓 – while strengthening resilience and climate protection. 💶 🌍 For the first time, the study quantifies the potential of industrial circularity in Germany and identifies concrete levers across sectors – from design for circularity and new business models to cross‑value‑chain collaboration. Key findings: ➡️ 𝐃𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 industrial circular economy gross value added from today’s roughly 𝟔𝟎 𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝟏𝟐𝟓 𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐬 📈 ➡️ 𝐋𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐚𝐰 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐬: up to 40 percent for rare earths elements and 15 percent for strategic battery minerals 🔋 ➡️ 𝐔𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝟏𝟏 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐎₂𝐞 𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 along global value chains 🌍 ➡️ 𝐔𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝟑𝟖 𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 investment needs for the energy transition ⚡️ For companies, this translates into: 👉 Up to 15 percent lower material costs 👉 Up to five percentage points higher margins through remanufacturing and refurbishment We see the same pattern in our projects: Those who build circular value creation now are shaping tomorrow’s industrial base – and making their business more resilient to shocks, supply risks and price volatility. Thanks to Holger Lösch Dr. Claas Oehlmann Dr. Johannes F. Kirchhoff Miki Yokoyama Jan Ceyssens Alexander Meyer zum Felde Dr. Patrick Herhold Viktoria Otte Suwako Susanna Minato-Torkler Philipp Eisenmann for presenting these interesting figures and giving insights at #IFATMunich. Full study on the industrial circular economy in Germany 👇 link below in the comments. #DesignForCircularity #Resilience #ValueCreation 📸 Messe München

Together with kiutra GmbH and European Quantum Industry Consortium (QuIC) , we’re bringing circular thinking into the quantum industry. At #QExpo 2026, we’ll share key insights from our joint report on circular quantum supply chains – and discuss how these principles can already be put into practice today. We’re excited for the exchange in Bilbao and to support the quantum community on its path to greater sustainability. Polina Ivanova Niclas-Alexander Mauss Tomek Schulz Harris Mubeen Kejal Shah Alexander Regnat Susanne Kittlinger

♻️ Looking back: Zero Waste meets #IFATMunich2026 On May 7, around 50 changemakers from Munich's companies, organizations, and startups joined us at IFAT worldwide Munich 2026 – all working on real solutions for a circular city and economy. As one of the implementing partners of the Zero Waste Innovation Hub, we're proud to have been part of shaping its third network event. A few highlights from the day: 🚌 𝐆𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬: 𝐜𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐅𝐀𝐓 𝐌𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐫  The day kicked off directly on the exhibition floor. Together with Circular Munich and the Landeshauptstadt München, the Zero Waste Innovation Hub ran three parallel guided solution tours through some of the most relevant circular innovations – covering textiles, electronics, and zero waste. The textile tour, co-guided by Lorena Maldonado and our colleague Canan Hanna Köllner, made stops at VDMA, TURNS, matterr, and MOOT – mapping the full textile value chain from machinery and sorting to recycling and new product creation. 🎤 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐲, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞  Stefan Rummel (CEO, Messe München) emphasized the value-creation potential that circular economy offers. Dr. Christian Scharpf (Head of the Department of Labor and Economic Development) followed up with a clear message: Munich is on the right track to unlock that potential through the Zero Waste Innovation Hub. 🚀 𝐈𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧  3 Zero Waste Innovation Hub projects presented by Canan Hanna Köllner provided hands-on insights into how circular solutions are being put into practice – from gastronomy to packaging to industrial material flows. reo Steffanie Rainer, Econ Industries Inc Reinhard Schmidt, FOODturo. circular food transformation Lina Maria Echeverri-Roeder 📊 𝐊𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐜: 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭  Laura Echternacht from Sustainable AG Unternehmensberatung made the case for the #DPP as a lever for transparency, circularity, and competitive advantage – one of the topics shaping the next phase of circular business. 🎯 𝐂𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 – 𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬  Moderated by Ramona Hempen (Department of Labor and Economic Development) and René Geiß (Department of Climate and Environmental Protection), the format invited companies to plug directly into ongoing city projects. Two spontaneous pitches from the audience were the perfect warm-up for the networking that followed. 🤝 The takeaway Events like this make one thing tangible: the transition to a Zero Waste City Munich needs close collaboration between city, startups, and established companies. A big thank you to all speakers, participants, and to Messe München for having us. The Zero Waste Innovation Hub is an initiative of the Landeshauptstadt München Department of Labor and Economic Development, implemented together with us and Circular Munich. 📸 Bert Willer I LHM

CIRCULAR REPUBLIC is growing—and the energy at our Partner Day at #IFATMunich2026 last week proved it. 📈 We gathered our partners to talk about the "State of the Republic," and one thing was undeniable: The #CircularEconomy has completely shifted to being a critical resilience and prosperity driver for the EU. Together with our partners, we are bridging the gap between ambition and real-world results. But we don't do it in a vacuum. When our partners took the stage, results became apparent and the room truly came alive. Here are a few highlights of what’s being built: ➡️ 𝐒𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐒𝐩𝐢𝐧 (ebm-papst × Güntner): Refurbished fans with full warranty — a real closed-loop spare parts model, already scaling beyond pilot stage and Germany. ➡️ 𝐄-𝐌𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐲𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠: Around 20 consortium partners building a value chain for critical raw materials from NdFeB magnets. First material deliveries incoming. First magnet pilots this summer. ➡️ 𝐓𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐄𝐏𝐑 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐫: 23 partners co-developing and testing the key elements of a future textile EPR system in Germany — operationally feasible and aligned with circularity goals. Our system design report is expected for July 2026. ➡️ 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲: AI infrastructure set to nearly double by 2030. Europe's digital sovereignty depends on closing the loop on hardware — now. ➡️ 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐬: Piloting take-back, reuse and refurbishment of B2B industrial electronics — focus areas include control cabinets, motors and robotics. Insights and learnings will be published in a report by Siemens & CIRCULAR REPUBLIC in June 2026. ➡️ PreZero International × BMW Group: PreZero is repositioning from waste management to circular economy industry partner — bundling complementary strengths with the BMW Group to build closed material loops across the automotive value chain. Their first major proof point: an end-to-end model turning end-of-life vehicles into a strategic secondary material source. And the day didn't end there. We walked over together to the IFAT Munich #GreenStage for the presentation of our 𝐂𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐞 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 — and the Knorr-Bremse 𝐂𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 ceremony. A fitting close to a day full of proof that this ecosystem is the real value of our partnership. 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐊 𝐘𝐎𝐔 🙏 to all our partners for bringing the circular economy to life with us. You are the circular pioneers making this ecosystem real. 💚 And also a big 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐊 𝐘𝐎𝐔 to IFAT worldwide for having us 🤗 BASF BSH Home Appliances Group SAP Interzero JAEGGI Decathlon Bergzeit Aurubis L'Oréal Dieter Schwarz Stiftung Zero Waste Innovation Hub Landeshauptstadt München