The Circular Economists Meet-up: Rotterdam

​The Circular Economists Rotterdam launches on 14 April at Lunch Bunch, Van Nelle Fabriek, with a line-up that brings together four different but connected stories about what circularity looks like when it starts becoming real.

​Emma van der Leest, founder of BlueCity (010) Lab, is building Fungkee, an early-stage venture developing a PFAS-free coating grown from fungi. It tackles one of the biggest contradictions in biomaterials: too many “sustainable” materials still rely on toxic finish layers to become usable.

​George Birch founded Oyster Heaven to restore oyster reefs in the North Sea. The model is simple and powerful: regenerate marine ecosystems while reducing costs linked to dredging and coastal defence. Ecology and economics in the same sentence.

​Narina Mnatsakanian, Chief Impact Officer at Regeneration.VC, brings the investor lens. Regeneration.VC, Circular Intelligence and WBCSD – World Business Council for Sustainable Development are working together on how circular impact can be understood in investment terms, including across value chains, not just within a company’s own operations. If circularity is going to attract serious capital, it has to be measurable.

​Silvia Panizzutti from WBCSD – World Business Council for Sustainable Development brings the measurement backbone. She has been involved in the Global Circularity Protocol from the beginning and will share where it stands today, where it is going, and what it means for businesses and investors trying to turn circularity into something that can actually be assessed, compared and acted on.

​Van Nelle Fabriek is exactly the right setting for this conversation. Built in 1931, it was designed around workers’ health, light, air and ergonomics from the start. A place shaped by systems thinking long before the term became fashionable.

​The event closes with the question that ties it all together: what does it take for a company like Emma’s or George’s to become investable for a fund like Narina’s, and for circular performance to become measurable in a way capital can actually use?

​Materials. Ecosystems. Capital. Measurement.

​From material innovation to ecosystem regeneration, from investment logic to measurement, this is what circularity looks like when it starts to hold.