“Closed-loop solutions are climate solutions” – Interzero and its customers postpone Earth Overshoot Day again

Berlin/Cologne. This year, by August 1, humanity has used as much from nature as the planet can renew in the entire year – according to calculations by Global Footprint Network (GFN) for 2024. Yet without the recycling activities and innovative closed loops from Interzero, Europe’s leading circular service provider, this ‘Earth Overshoot Day’ would be reached even sooner, as the Network’s annual calculations again demonstrate.

Together with its approximately 50,000 customers and its broad-based closed-loop solution portfolio, Interzero has again managed to postpone the global Earth Overshoot Day by more than seven minutes. Once again, this offers concrete evidence of the positive impact of the company’s service portfolio.

“We want to work with our customers to make a real impact,” says Interzero’s Chairman and Owner Dr Axel Schweitzer. “With our focus squarely on our vision of a world without waste – in which the available resources are used sustainably and responsibly – we are constantly seeking out new ways of moving Earth Overshoot Day further and further back. Our efforts deliver tangible success.” 

Joining forces to conserve resources

Postponing Earth Overshoot Day can only be done with teamwork. The sustainable handling of goods and packaging also needs to become second nature for both companies and consumers. From one end of the value chain to the other: starting with product design (focusing here on durability, repairability and recyclability), and continuing with reuse and final recycling. A general framework needs to be set up for this, plus incentives.

“Closed-loop solutions are climate solutions,” says Sebastiaan Krol, CEO Interzero Circular Solutions. “However, to increase the volume of valuable raw materials we can manage in the loop, theoretical approaches also need the will to put these ideas into actual practice. I’m proud to say we are doing exactly this for more and more products in a wide range of industries. But we’re not resting on our laurels: we merely see these 7 minutes and 12 seconds as a milestone on our journey to replace the largely linear ways of doing business with a truly circular economy,” Krol continues.

Interzero works with its customers to help conserve natural resources. Outdoor brand VAUDE has developed the first bike pannier bag made from 100% recycled plastic packaging waste. The recycled plastics used here are sourced from Interzero. Interzero’s packaging experts are also working with ALDI in a continuous process of improvements to own-brand product packaging, while energy supplier EnBW is relying on the circular service provider’s know-how in IT refurbishment.

A note on calculation methodology:

Global Footprint Network bases its calculations on a resource accounting tool called the Ecological Footprint. Using these accounts, the non-profit organisation compares the current resource demand of humanity or a country’s population against Earth’s capacity for biological regeneration. Much of the data for estimating Interzero’s contribution to conservation of resources is provided, among others, by the “resources SAVED by Recycling” study carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT. Once per year, Interzero commissions these scientists to determine the volumes of greenhouse gases and resources saved through the recycling of recyclable materials.

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