Public Funding for Circulogic Limited

Technology has a significant role to play in helping find and deliver solutions to the world's pressing climate emergency and resource efficiency challenges. With Governments and large corporations exploring how we can emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic more resilient, the Circular Economy is highlighted as a solution to 'build back better'. A Circular Economy disrupts existing linear models of consumption based on take, make and dispose. In a Circular Economy nothing is wasted: resources are retained at their highest possible value for as long as possible and recycling is the option of last resort. Emerging from this concept are new business models and product / service design philosophies, including design for disassembly, leasing and sharing platforms. Product reuse, incorporating elements of refurbishment, remanufacturing, upgrade and repurposing, represents a central pillar of any Circular Economy. As a sector, reuse organisations (e.g. charities) deliver strong social value, providing valuable training and jobs for those with e.g. physical and/or learning disabilities. Barriers to reuse that this project aims to help overcome, include: * As a throwaway society, it has become the norm to discard reusable items and buy new. This is because it is commonly cheaper and easier to buy new than to refurbish or repair; * Whilst reuse helps keep a number of key commodities, including those with high levels of embodied carbon (e.g. clothing), out of the waste management chain, it suffers from a lack of national level policy and fiscal support; * The application of technology to reuse is limited, meaning it is poorly monitored and recorded. This contributes to a situation where the benefits of reuse are not well quantified in waste avoidance terms, and operations are rarely optimised; * Reuse activities tend to be labour intensive, making it difficult to efficiently scale and add value. As a result, too many items with reuse potential are disposed of. Hence, opportunities to match reusable items with customers prepared to pay a fair amount for them (covering all costs in the reuse chain) are missed; and * The above time/effort issue is exacerbated by the high level of variability between products, which limits resale potential and the ability of resellers to achieve the best price. This feasibility study aims to address a key challenge associated with speeding up the process of identifying a used product's reuse/resale potential, through the application of AI-powered computer vision, and associated platform integration.