LONG LIVE E-WASTE

Apart from the scrap used by a large number of the Biscayan steel mills, all of which are electric today, around Bilbao there are companies that obtain zinc, sulphur, and aluminium from dust generated by manufacturing processes, and that otherwise would have to be left in landfills. In addition, Indumetal Recycling is the main state-owned company for recycling household appliances and other devices to prevent their destruction.

Curiously, all these companies (including the current European leader, Befesa) came to be as a result of an initiative by a series of entrepreneurs (several of them of German origin) who settled in the Basque Country to exploit its mining resources. And, when those resources were running out, they had the idea of converting their plants into recycling centres with cutting-edge technology, which has gradually been improved over the years.

This innovative spirit lives on thanks to the new entrepreneurs of what is now known as the “Circular Economy”. These individuals take advantage of the growing social awareness of environmental protection and increasingly strict European regulations that require us to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

STATE-OF-THE-ART TECHNOLOGY TO REUSE (NON)WASTE

A significant number of these entrepreneurs come from Ceit, the research centre of the Universidad de Navarra in Donostia, which is developing state-of-the-art technology to reuse metals that, until now, ended up in landfills, from the rare earth metals found in the magnets of car engines to the palladium in catalysts.

Biscay has not been left behind, as Teknan and Spouted Bed Solutions are two start-ups that are developing, in parallel, technology to reuse plastics in order to make biofuels. Led by an engineer and a chemist, Karlos Uraga and Aitor Pablos, the two companies are already in the industrialisation phase, allowing them to open plants that do something that almost seems like magic right now, while at the same time eliminating a type of waste that is flooding even the seas.

RECIRCULAR: AN INDUSTRIAL PLOT TWIST IN FAVOUR OF SOCIETY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

A less technological but no less promising initiative is the one led by Patricia Astrain, a chemical engineer from Getxo who has created one of the most successful start-ups today: Recircular. Her case is interesting both because of her company’s business activity (basically, digitalising the entire reuse process at firms) and her personal history.

As if she had had a vision, Astrain discovered one fine day, in the middle of China, that her true vocation was not the refining of oil, or production quality, but rather saving the planet. Perhaps she realised the enormous capacity for destruction that human beings can have when ethical values are not taken into account when doing business.

This revelation led her to, firstly, start a business and, secondly, do her part to improve the environment and society. And she did so in industrial environments, where financial goals usually prevail, and everything else takes a back seat.

LET’S MAKE WASTE OUR BEST ASSET

With the help of a platform that makes it possible to identify, online, which materials or production surpluses can be reused, and with which partner it is possible to do so, Recircular is digitally transforming this work. Companies that had never taken advantage of their waste can, thanks to Recircular, put this asset to use so that third parties can derive value from it.

The platform, which Astrain has managed to develop on her own without external funding, is a textbook case of social innovation applied to industry. Recircular allows one not only to find out how waste or production surpluses can be used, but also to automatically calculate how the environment is improved thanks to measures of this type.

Although the platform initially has a logical, local focus, its technology and model are easily expandable into other geographical areas. In fact, Astrain thought up her project while she was travelling between China, Belgium, and the United Kingdom, and she set it up in the Basque Country in order to be close to home. Her first client was a British firm: Johnson & Johnson.

On the technological side, the Recircular platform uses Artificial Intelligence to analyse the information, and is introducing Blockchain technology to certify the transactions carried out between its users. All this is in the Cloud, and with data that comes from the companies that reuse the materials, as well as the research by the team led by Astrain.