🗓 May 26-28, 2025

📍 Joxe Mari Korta Zentroa, San Sebastian (Spain)

Thought and organized by Prof. Steven De Meester, Prof. Kim Ragaert and dr. Haritz Sardon, the event is an open forum related with Plastic Waste Management that will be celebrated between the 26 and the 28 of May 2025 in San Sebastian, Spain.

Considering the urgency towards the need to develop solutions to the plastic emergency, we believe that to gather some of the leaders in a comfortable environment offers incredible opportunities to align in the complex and urgent problem of plastic waste management.

So far, Michael Shaver (Manchester University, UK), Markus Antonietti (Max Planck Institute, Germany), Catharina Bening (ETH, Switzerland), Katrina Knauer (NREL, USA), Bernhard Von Vacano (BASF, Germany), Bosman Werner (EU Commision), Karolis Vilcinskas (Reckitt, UK) and Maria Soliman (SABIC, Netherlands) have agreed to join the event and the forum.

We have a dual focus. On the one hand to foster the academic/industrial interaction/collaboration between the different key players involved in the meeting and on the other hand, to discuss some main topic that were defined in the event conception and preparation, such as:

a) Is there a need to develop new plastics that are more circular or we should try to focus the efforts in giving solution to current plastics?
b) Is the scientific community working on the most important real problems? If no how we could solve it?
c) Should we better include social sustainability in circular economy rese- arch? If yes which aspects and how?
d) Can recycling approaches be the same in developed and non-develo- ped countries? How to link technical research to the country context?