BOND - Circular agent

Companies in Flanders and the Netherlands consume every day large quantities of materials, water and energy. This often results in residual flows that are not reused, such as packaging, waste water, raw materials, food waste or heat. Only a small proportion of industrial waste streams are currently reused in a high-quality manner: in the EU, it is estimated that only 12% of raw materials used are recycled. Today, there are already many good initiatives in the field of reuse, but they are often too fragmented, limited to a single sector or lacking practical follow-up.

BOND wants to do things differently. Instead of simply discarding these residual flows or recycling them in a low-value manner, the project aims to assist companies in sharing these residual flows intelligently with other companies, including those across borders. This is achieved through a new concept: the “circular agent”. This intermediary figure assists companies in seeking concrete, feasible collaborations. The project aims to achieve at least 30 concrete circular matches between companies in the border region. The focus is on industrial symbiosis: situations in which one company's waste or surplus is a usable raw material for another. An economic and ecological win-win for all parties! Think of a company with surplus heat that shares it with a neighbouring company via a local heat network, a manufacturing company that supplies its plastic waste to a recycling partner in the region, or a food company with organic waste streams that can supply a farmer with a biogas plant.