It is to become the "Amazon for recycled plastics": The DBU-funded start-up cirplus from Hamburg with its founders Christian Schiller and Volkan Bilici has created a global marketplace for circular plastics. On the site www.cirplus.com, disposers, recyclers and plastics processors can register offers and requirements. Pricing, communication, negotiation, logistics, credit insurance, payment processing and contract management are then handled by cirplus. The founders' mission: to make purchasing and selling recycled plastics easier than ever before.
"Trading and using recyclates is a key approach to reducing plastic input into the environment and production-related CO2 emissions," explains Schiller, the company's CEO. At present, however, plastics processing companies almost exclusively use virgin plastic, because the use of recycled materials is often more expensive. In addition, there is a lack of standards, traceable, certifiable material flows and reliable sources of supply for consistent recyclate qualities.
cirplus is working with the German Institute for Standardization (DIN e. V.), Berlin, to develop standards for recycled plastics and create transparency with regarding to quantity, quality and price. This reduces transaction costs and thus provides an economic incentive for the use of recyclates. The production of plastics as petroleum-based virgin materials generates more than 1.7 billion tons of CO2 annually. The use of each ton of recyclate saves between 50 and 85 percent CO2 emissions compared to the use of virgin materials.
The digital marketplace has been live since March 2020; several tens of thousands of tons of material have already been traded by companies from 46 countries. cirplus CEO Schiller: "In five to ten years, we want cirplus to have measurably established or catalyzed the use of recyclates in industry."
DBU supports green start-ups
The Green Start-ups of today are the market leaders of tomorrow - according to this view, the DBU has been increasingly supporting green founders or teams of founders since last year. Since June 2019, 22 start-ups have been brought in for funding. The Green Start-up Special Program is enjoying high demand and a further increase in the proportion of female founders. Applications are open at any time at.
www.dbu.de/startup
Read more or listen:
More about the DBU Start-up Program: Interview with Dr. Stefanie Grade and Dr.-Ing. Jörg Lefèvre, both DBU, on YouTube.
The website for the program: www.dbu.de/startup
More on the topic: DBU-funded Green Start-up Monitor 2020 by Borderstep Institute and the German Start-up Association.
Translated with Deepl.
