Happy New Year! Here’s your round-up of news from the past two weeks. It’s been busy!

Industry News

Collaborations and Partnerships 🤝:

ZigZag teams up with The Salvation Army to keep clothing in circulation. The partnership connects retail returns and unwanted stock directly into The Salvation Army’s reuse and resale network, diverting garments from disposal. By pairing reverse logistics with charity infrastructure, the model delivers social and circular value at scale. Read more.

British Beauty Council partners with MYGroup to tackle hard-to-recycle packaging. The initiative targets beauty items that typically fall outside household recycling, including pumps, caps and mixed materials. By bringing together brands, salons and specialist recyclers, the scheme aims to close long-standing collection and processing gaps across the sector. Read more.

Circulose partners with Birla Cellulose to advance circular textiles. The collaboration will scale use of Circulose’s wood-based recycled cellulose fibre across Birla’s global textile operations, boosting demand for low-impact materials and cutting reliance on virgin viscose and rayon. Read more.

Eni’s Versalis and Prysmian to chemically recycle plastic cable scrap. The Italian energy giant’s chemical arm has partnered with cable maker Prysmian to turn difficult-to-recycle plastic cable waste into new polymer feedstock using advanced chemical recycling technology. Pilot operations are due in 2026. Read more.

Company Updates 🔎:

Dr Martens eyes global expansion for its ReWair resale arm. The iconic bootmaker is considering extending its ReWair resale platform beyond the US after selling over 10,000 pre-loved pairs and attracting many new customers. The move would build on growing demand for second-hand footwear and strengthen the brand’s circular footprint in key markets. Read more.

Walmart opens recommerce to all marketplace sellers. The retail giant is now letting every merchant on its marketplace list used and refurbished products, expanding recommerce opportunities beyond approved partners. The change is designed to drive resale traffic, increase product lifecycles and offer shoppers more sustainable purchase options. Read more.

Miele expands refurbished appliance sales across Europe. The German home appliance manufacturer is scaling up its programme to sell refurbished washing machines and other household units, building on early pilots in multiple EU markets that repaired and resold used appliances. Read more.

Trane Technologies pioneers circularity impact metrics. The climate innovator has unveiled a new measurement system to track how products and operations extend life, reduce waste and recover materials. The framework aims to bring consistent circular performance data across the company’s solutions and value chains. Read more.

SK tes earns NCSC accreditation for data destruction in the UK. The ITAD provider has been certified by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre to deliver secure onsite and offsite data sanitisation and destruction services across enterprise environments. The accreditation expands its compliance credentials and underlines its capability to handle sensitive asset recovery. Read more.

Tuurny builds a precision robot to harvest parts from old electronics. The Northern California startup is developing an AI-guided autonomous robot that “surgically” removes intact chips, connectors and other high-value components from discarded electronics rather than shredding them into mixed scrap. Read more.

Ergo Eco Solutions turns leftover food into road-ready materials. The company is transforming used cooking oil and organic food waste into bio-based products for dust suppression and road stabilisation. Early pilots show longer-lasting performance and reduced water use on unpaved roads, offering a lower-carbon alternative to conventional treatments. Read more.

Regional Updates 🌎️:

US holiday shopping trends signal cautious consumer behaviour. Spending through the peak season topped last year’s totals, but shoppers showed shifts towards thrift, discount and deliberate buying amid price and economic uncertainty. Pre-Christmas returns also dipped as budgets tightened and value took priority. Read more. 

Majority of Americans back deposit return systems for cans and bottles. A new Every Can Counts survey finds most US adults support refundable deposits on beverage containers. Respondents say pay-back schemes would improve recovery rates and reduce waste across communities. Read more.

South Korea sets a 30% plastic waste cut target by 2030. The government has unveiled a national plan to reduce plastic waste generation and improve recycling rates through stronger regulation, expanded collection systems and incentives for reuse. Measures include tougher packaging standards, extended producer responsibility and support for circular innovation. Read more.

Swedish consumers show strong preference for sustainable clothing. A recent study finds shoppers in Sweden increasingly favour garments with clear environmental credentials, with many willing to pay more for recycled fibres and circular design features. Respondents rank durability, repairability and material transparency among the top factors influencing their purchases. Read more.

Repair barriers are quietly shortening vehicle lifespans in Europe. Restrictions on access to parts, software and diagnostics are making many otherwise repairable vehicles uneconomic to fix across the EU. Independent repairers warn that rising barriers are pushing cars and light trucks into premature scrappage. Read more.

France delays its single-use plastic cup ban to 2030. The French government has pushed back a planned ban on throwaway plastic cups by four years after saying viable alternatives are not ready for widespread use. The ban, originally due in January 2026, will now start in 2030, giving businesses more time to deploy alternatives. Read more.

Investment News

M&A 💰️:

Promus Capital acquires Tersus Solutions to accelerate growth. The deal will support the expansion of Tersus’s cleaning, repair and recommerce services, enabling the company to scale capacity, technology and customer reach across apparel and specialty markets. Read more.

Alphabet buys Intersect Power for $4.75bn to secure renewable energy for AI data centres. The Google parent company has agreed to acquire the clean energy and data centre infrastructure developer for $4.75bn in cash plus assumed debt, aiming to pair renewables with its expanding AI computing footprint. Read more.

LJP Waste Solutions expands into paint recycling with Amazon Paint buy. The waste services provider has acquired Amazon Paint, strengthening its capacity to collect, process and redistribute leftover paints and coatings. The deal broadens LJP’s service mix, adding reuse and recycling streams that divert paint from landfill and support community-level reuse. Read more.

Mercadona moves to bring reusable packaging in-house. The Spanish supermarket group has agreed to acquire Logifruit, a specialist in managing reusable packaging systems across retail supply chains. The move is designed to strengthen logistics efficiency while scaling reuse models across Mercadona’s operations. Read more.

Venture and Growth Capital 📈:

Investors see circular economy as a resilience and growth lever. A Goldman Sachs Asset Management analysis highlights that circular economy investments can offer portfolio diversification and protection against supply chain, geopolitical and inflation risks through more localised resource flows and stable infrastructure-style cash flows. The report points to opportunities across waste management, water treatment and reuse models that link essential services with predictable returns. Read more.

cylib secures €63.4m grant to build LFP battery recycling line. The German recycler has won funding from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy to finance a dedicated 30,000-tonne lithium iron phosphate battery recycling line at its Dormagen site. Read more.

Mitsubishi Materials invests in US e-waste recycler Elemental USA. The Japanese materials group has agreed to acquire a portion of Elemental USA E-Waste & ITAD, expanding its global resource-circulation footprint in North America. The move is part of a strategy to scale e-scrap collection and strengthen secondary raw material supply. Read more.

Bioweg secures €1.5m grant to develop rare earth recovery from waste. The project has received funding to build a platform that extracts critical rare earth elements from industrial waste and process residues, unlocking secondary sources of high-value materials while reducing dependence on primary mining. Read more.

Equitix acquires stake in Viridor’s energy-from-waste platform. The infrastructure investor has taken a minority interest in Viridor’s UK waste-to-energy assets from KKR. The move strengthens Equitix’s exposure to residual waste infrastructure that diverts material from landfill while generating power. Read more.

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Cheers to circularity,

#TeamCircularConnect #ConnectingTheCircularEconomy