The business seeks to provide effective online trade of eco-friendly commodities.
A new approach to purchase and trade sustainable commodities at scale has been introduced by Palo Alto, California’s Circular.co, with an initial focus on recycled plastics, through the debut of its full-service digital platform. According to the firm, the platform offers effective online trade, easily available data, and transparent economics to assist key sectors in their evolution toward a more sustainable future. By handling all of its clients’ sourcing, vetting, matching, contracting, shipping, and invoicing, Circular’s digital infrastructure solutions are intended to streamline supply chain operations. With a comprehensive guarantee and a professional concierge to help with the entire transaction, buyers and sellers may trade with confidence.
According to Ian Arthurs, founder and CEO of Circular, “Circular’s focus is on the larger economic and environmental picture behind enabling brands and significant manufacturers acquire the materials they need to accomplish sustainability goals.” The sector has lacked the infrastructure and economic clarity to allow more recovery and circularity, yet there is more than enough [recyclable] material available to fulfill demand.
According to Aidan Madigan-Curtis, partner at Eclipse Ventures and member of Circular’s board, “Circular picked recycled plastics to start because of the scope of opportunity and difficulty this business confronts.” “Over 380 million tons of virgin plastic are produced year, and recycling rates worldwide are still just around 9%, lately falling to sub 5% in the United States. Oceans of trash are produced as a result, and our bloodstreams are pumped with around 2 gigatons of carbon dioxide annually.
According to Madigan-Curtis, “The plastics business is crucial to the world economy and obviously has to evolve responsibly as quickly as feasible.” “It’s inevitable that the digital tools needed to support this sustainable transformation will apply to the plastic sector; our purpose is to speed up the process.”
Adam Lowry, the creator of Method and Ripple Foods, was a notable early user of sustainable packaging and is aware of the difficulties businesses encounter when trying to find high-quality recycled material.
“We commend large companies for adopting environmental objectives to lessen their reliance on virgin plastic. The moment has come to follow through on those commitments, according to Lowry. “With the economy doing well, recyclers are investing in greater capacity, and Circular’s digital platform offers more alternatives to buyers and sellers, facilitating trading. I’m certain we have the proper ingredients for meaningful change for the first time in more than ten years.
“By giving a clear digital trade experience, brands and manufacturers can now confidently acquire sustainable materials at scale,” adds Arthurs. “This generates a clear economic opportunity which in turn promotes innovation to create more supply, more liquidity and eventually higher circularity, less waste and less C02. The ultimate objective of Circular is to create a true win-win situation by fusing the greatest technology with the realities of how plastic is purchased.
Circular believes its leadership team is well positioned to execute on its objectives, having decades of technological platform experience from the likes of Google, Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Bloomberg, Snap and Medium. Complementing that, Arthurs established a deep branch of senior industry consultants, including Lowry and executives in the recycling and manufacturing areas. Circular added Eclipse Ventures as their lead investor to complete the team. Eclipse Ventures is a leading venture capital firm that supports business owners in creating great businesses that improve the productivity, resilience, and profitability of physical industries. Manufacturing, supply chains, and logistics are just a few of the physical industries that may benefit from the combination’s unmatched depth of knowledge in digitization.
Circular and Eclipse have been researching, developing, and testing the online marketplace with buyers and sellers over the past 12 months. With genuine scalability for international customers and sellers, Circular.co is finally ready to launch.
