Circular Berlin at the 3rd PLATE Conference

PLATE stands for Product Lifetimes and the Environment and is a conference series organised by Fraunhofer IZM and Technical University Berlin. This year, it took place from 18-20th of September in Berlin. Circular Berlin was present with a poster about the CURE project entitled ‘Centers for Urban Re-manufacture: Lessons from the CURE Pathfinder project‘ by Isabel Ordonez and a presentation highlighting the process of a community-based circular economy in Berlin summarising the milestones and approach of Circular Berlin by Georg Hubmann. Arianna Nicoletti together with Isabel Ordonez also hosted a workshop with the title ‘Circular Strategies to Prolong Fashion Products’ Life Time‘ and finally, Lars Zimmermann gave a workshop entitled ‘If Everything Was Made from Lego There Would Be No Garbage – Hacking Things Modular with Pre-use!‘. The Global Climate Strike was vividly present during the last day of the conference when the participants were designing posters for the demonstration and mobilised colleagues and friends.

Georg Hubmann presenting the lessons learned from Circular Berlin

The biennial conference brought together academics, industry, civil society as well as policy makers and dealt with product lifetimes in the context of sustainability. Participants’ contributions focused predominantly on sustainable practices in the development, production, use, reuse and recycling of products from various fields like electronics, textiles, furniture, vehicles etc. Particularly popular topics in 2019 were current movements like the circular economy, ecodesign and collaborative consumption. Together more than 200 conference participants contributed 3 keynote speeches, 11 workshops, 105 presentations in five parallel sessions, 20 posters and immeasurable know-how and experience during the discussions and networking times.

A true highlight of the conference were the hands-on workshops taking place on Thursday and Friday morning. 11 workshops, 11 different approaches to making products more sustainable or judging their sustainability. From “Proactive Obsolescence Management” and “The Sustainable Smartphone of the Future” to strategies for prolonging fashion products’ lifetime and “Testing for Premature Obsolescence” – there was something interesting for everyone to be found!