The aim of the new service is to create greater insight into Danes’ recycling habits and make it easier to strengthen the circular economy based on concrete data. For that, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency needs more players in the recycling market (municipalities, private companies, NGOs, etc.) to report their data, which the new system now makes easier.
Interest in recycling and circular solutions is increasing among both citizens and businesses. However, although many people work actively with recycling, there is currently limited overall knowledge about the scope and effect of the effort. This makes it difficult to measure progress and identify where there is potential for doing more.
Making recycling data more accessible
With the new portal, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to make recycling data more accessible and create a common data basis that can support both decision-making, knowledge sharing and future initiatives within recycling.
The portal has been developed as part of the LIFE project Circular Economy Beyond Waste and is funded by the EU’s LIFE programme (LIFE IP CEBW) and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. The solution has been developed in collaboration with the AI and data transformation company Solita, which has been responsible for the development of the digital platform.
The project is based on voluntary participation from companies, organisations and municipalities, which can continuously report data on recycled products and materials. Therefore, there has been a special focus on creating a solution that is simple to use and at the same time provides value for the actors who contribute data throughout the entire development process.
In collaboration with the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, Solita’s UX and development teams have worked on user involvement and design of the platform to make the reporting of data easier and more usable in practice. The platform contains, among other things, visual overviews and graphs that enable companies and organisations to translate data into concrete insights and create a better overview of their recycling efforts.
“When participation is voluntary, it is crucial that the solution is user-friendly for those who use it in everyday life. Therefore, we have had a strong focus on developing a platform that not only collects data, but also makes it usable,” says Mathilde Grubak, project manager at Solita.
At Solita, they point out that access to usable data will be crucial to be able to accelerate the green transition and create more transparency around recycling.
“Data plays an important role in the work with circular economy. When several actors gather and share knowledge about recycling in one place, it becomes easier to understand the development, identify potentials and strengthen the efforts that are already making a difference,” says Stine Buhl-Hansen, Project Manager, Circular Economy & Waste at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.
The goal is for more actors to contribute data so that the development of recycling can be documented more accurately – and so that companies, authorities and the public can get a better picture of how recycling contributes to the green transition.
“We are pleased to have contributed to the development of a solution that can help strengthen the circular economy in Denmark. It has been important for us to create a platform that can both handle large amounts of data and at the same time is intuitive and simple to use. When participation and reporting are voluntary, user-friendliness is crucial for more companies to want to contribute data and create greater transparency about recycling,” says Jesper Dan Christiansen, EVP at Solita.
The Danish Environmental Protection Agency encourages shops, municipalities, organisations and companies with activities in recycling to contribute data to the platform.
Read more about the initiative at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency
Visit the portal here: Data on Recycling
For more information
Jesper Dan Christiansen, Executive Vice President, Denmark, +45 4132 8655, [email protected]