Spain has always been a country of innovators, but hardly an innovative country itself. Spain’s companies and entrepreneurs are using sustainable innovation to make inroads into global markets, although the country as a whole still has not made the circular economy a priority on the political agenda.
Investmest specialists RobecoSam recently published a sustainability yearbook in which 20 Spanish publicly traded companies like Acciona and other big utilities, banks, IT, and infrastructure corporations are lauded for factors such as their ability to innovate, attract and retain talent, or increase resource efficiency.
But smaller, leaner, ambitious and more circular economy focused entrepreneurs are also worth keeping an eye on - here are a few of our favourite.
1. EcoAlf
A pioneer tapping into the high end fashion market with their “trashion” concept, EcoAlf creates clothing and accessories from fishing nets, plastic bottles and even coffee grinds. Managing local supply chains within the 11 countries they operate in, each recycled material is processed and turned into new products in the region it originated. Many of their pieces are designed to be disassembled for reuse or simple recycling. EcoAlf has a positive impact around the world (and stars like Richard Gere and Gwyneth Paltrow love the garments, which also helps).
2. Axioma Solucions
This company has created a perfect circular economy product - reusable surgical polyester material. It is offered as a service: the clients pay for the surgical material, Axioma delivers it, gathers it after each use, performs the washing and sterilisation, and returns it.
The polyester used is both from recycled sources and completely recyclable after its 75 uses. With the global impact of recycled material up to 6.5 times less than disposable material, products like this demonstrate the need, success, and viability of designing for the circular economy.
3. The Cosentino Group
This family-owned company, and an eco-innovation pioneer, researched, designed and created new products using post-consumer and post-industry waste. Their range of colourful countertops, Eco Line by Silestone, is created from at least 50% recycled materials such as porcelain, mirrors, glass bottles, vitrified ashes and pottery waste, and is glued together using vegetable rosin.
This new product filled a huge void in the industry: a recycled surface. They have made use of 65m used glass bottles, 530 cubic meters of vitrified ashes, 2m square meters of old mirrors, and 50,000 square meters of cast-off ceramic floor tiles. Their positive global impact goes even further, to the manufacturing process through eliminating the use of solvents for cleaning, recycling 94% of water used, and minimising emissions of volatile organic compounds.
4. Zicla
Zicla converts waste materials into business opportunities, enabling companies to improve their commitment to environmental responsibility by promoting, designing, and selling recycled construction products. Zicla has 47 recycled products on the market, such as traffic dividers and street furniture. They head up R&D projects, market development, eco-design, and trainings. They take up to 75,000kg of waste per year and put it to use, making many products from 100% recycled material. Taking advantage of existing synergies among companies, industrial and service sectors and people, Zicla forges connections to harness the power of keeping raw materials circulating.
5. Aqualogy
Aqualogy spent two years engineering the Aqualogy PicoTurbine technology: tiny hydroelectric turbines which can contribute to powering facilities through energy recovered from water circulation.
They can be installed wherever a pressure gauge or reducer is needed on a water line, regaining energy that would otherwise be lost, and providing power to remote systems. This eliminates the need to expand clunky electrical infrastructure, install expensive solar panels, or send crew to manually record systems data.
The device is compact and versatile, has minimal installation costs and drastically reduces maintenance needs while improving service. It is pure positive environmental impact through generation of 100% clean and renewable energy, and is very circular: using energy from flowing water to report on the flowing water’s status and contribute to powering facilities.
6. Basurama
Spanish for Trash-o-rama, Basurama is a non-profit group of artists and writers building, publishing and presenting on the reuse of trash and garbage as art, worldwide. They create projects that provide a better understanding of waste as a resource, and raise awareness of waste production.
These projects take shape in many different ways, such as workshops, public art interventions, maps or data visualisations. They work with a wide range of stakeholders, from neighbourhood communities and local artists to municipal governments.
Basurama’s instructions, toolkits, and guides enable communities to use their own waste to transform their environment and create better public spaces, putting circular economy in the hands of everyday people and students.
These are just a few inspirational circular businesses from Spain, where Sustainable Brands Barcelona’s second edition takes place on 22-24 May. The professional conferences will focus on circular economy with a focus on the guest country, The Netherlands, which currently holds the presidency of the council of the European Union.The conference will have 40+ world-class speakers, such as Markus Laubscher, director sustainability and circular economy at Royal Philips.
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Philips, sponsor of the circular economy hub
