On 30th August 2021, the Circular Valley accelerator held its first Demo Day at ‘Gaskessel Wuppertal’, a historic gasometer turned into an event location. An audience of 180 personally invited participants from industry, politics, and culture witnessed the event, which was moderated by Carsten Gerhardt, the initiator of the Circular Valley. The Demo Day programme consisted mainly of a small exhibition and short pitches by 14 startups, which had participated in the first batch of the accelerator programme since June.
One of the startups on stage was the Circular Economy Internet Society. Wolfgang Lehmacher, Executive Director at the CEI Society, explained in his pitch, why the Circular Economy Internet as a global public good is urgently needed for accelerating the transition to a circular economy. He outlined the concept and explained the roadmap of the CEI team’s activities. In his closing remarks, he invited the attending industry participants to get in touch with the CEI team, in order to explore how they could benefit from getting involved in the activities of the CEI Society.
Further highlights of the programme included a virtual welcome address by Andreas Pinkwart, Minister of Economy, Innovation, Digitization and Energy North Rhine Westphalia, and a keynote by Johannes F. Kirchhoff, Managing Partner Kirchhoff Group and CEO Kirchhoff Ecotec.
The event showed the strong interest in circular solutions by public and private stakeholders as well as the high innovative potential demonstrated by the pitching startups.