We organise our actions in six thematic & strategic agendas:
Strategic Agendas:
Bio-economy
Circular Construction
Chemicals/Plastics
Manufacturing Industry
Food Chain
Water Cycles
Seven leverages provide additional support:
Leverage effects:
Lever Policy Instruments
Lever Circular Procurement
Lever Communication
Lever Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Lever Financing
Lever Jobs & Skills
Lever Research
What, why and how?
Why are we pursuing a circular economy?
Future visions 2050
How do we see our circular future?
About our management
Who steers what at Flanders Circular?
BC Materials is a cooperative that is the first in the EU to produce building materials on the basis of excavated soil from construction sites.
Until today, soil used by construction companies, including clean and unpolluted soil, is simply disposed of, transported and legally considered as waste. We wanted to break through that linear process, to work in a more sustainable, circular way in which the soil becomes an ingredient for new building materials.
This means we work with construction companies, architects and building owners to reuse pure soil from sites. We transform pure earth of construction sites to local building materials such as clay plasters, compressed earth blocks and rammed earth for walls and floors. These products are circular, carbon neutral, healthy and possess minimal grey energy. This way, we also help building companies to achieve their climate targets and reduce their footprint.
We have our own production warehouse to make ready-made products, but we can also work on site thanks to our mobile production unit. This keeps BC Materials' infrastructure and logistics close to the raw materials and keeps our transport to an absolute minimum.
BC architecten
Partners Het Leemniscaat, Vlaams Architectuur Instituut, De Meuter, Technologiecampus Gent; KULeuven
Sectors
Themes
Organisations
In the corona year 2020, we were also able to record growth figures, both in production and sales. The Green Deal at the European level and the objective of a C02-neutral Europe by 2050 can be an enormous lever for our start-up. The cooperative is already breaking even after two years thanks to the sale of building materials, workshops and expertise. A five-year financial plan has been drawn up. It includes the expansion of the production site, the purchase of machinery, the recruitment of personnel for marketing and sales.
Additional grants are of course welcome for further research and development and to scale up our production. At the end of 2019, for example, we were laureates of BeCircular Yard 2019 and SenseFund 2019, which means further trust and investment. With equity crowdfunding within our community of 7,000 people, we just completed a successful financial round where we raised 200,000 private capital.
Further, our growth is linked to ongoing (self) evaluation. We keep an activity report and an account per project, so we can see which projects are making a profit or loss. We also keep track of the number of visitors of lectures, workshops, our Facebook page ... and we have evaluation forms filled in. All this gives us extra insight into what we can improve in terms of awareness raising and dissemination.
Finally, we receive guidance and regular feedback from hub.brussels, BeCircular, Flanders Circular and CircleMade. This also gives us additional insights to adjust our market orientation when and where necessary.