Profile & Expertise
CirEkon is a center for circular economy, situated in Belgrade, Serbia, with the aim to catalyze systemic circular economy implementation in the region. It holds a unique set of expertise around education, advisory services, analysis and assessment for circular economy. CirEkon is a creator of a major CE education format in Serbia – the Academy for Circular Economy, was leading several major researches for European projects in domain of CE and is currently assessing and implementing circularity in production and delivery to several clients. It’s broad network of experts spans over the whole continent of Europe and holds a unique capability to deal with circular challenges on company, city or national levels. CirEkon had been also advising Serbian public bodies in the domain of circular economy action planning since its formation.
Role in the project
As a Task Partner, CirEkon’s role is to create a susceptible environment in Serbia, analyze and assess the potential for eco-system creation around two topics in parallel: 1. Retrofitting old heavy duty vehicles in public service with novel catalyzers, and 2. Assessing the potential for building recycling capacities for old catalyzers that will, potentially be exchanged. In that sense, 1. Organization of events, education and information dissemination primarily with the eco-system audience, 2. market and circularity analysis as well as 3. Policy and 4. Assessment for entrepreneurial activities falls within CirEkon’s role in the INNOCAT project. Simply put, CirEkon’s role is to create a collaborative eco-system for a new circular market in Serbia that tackles PGMs and retrofitted public vehicles. In this, CirEkon had created a working environment in 5 cities of Serbia, attracting over 100 stakeholders, with over 2.000 vehicles that are soon to be outdated if not updated, and created working conditions for a cross-boarder collaboration on the topic for interested parties. Finally, CirEkon is responsible for piloting of new catalyzers in public vehicles, testing of results and facilitating further activation of major Serbian stakeholders such as municipalities, research centers, public utility companies, auto shops and policy makers- for potential future activities in new circular market formation.
Contribution to knowledge building in the region
CirEkon is maintaining a constant contact with interested parties in Serbia. Through close collaboration with Monolithos LTD, CirEkon is organizing information feeds and education (online) events, while constantly broadening its target audience. At the project finale, CirEkon will have delivered several education webinars, a networking event to facilitate further collaboration in the field, and will have detected policy gaps, forwarding these to policy makers in order to lift recognized barriers for new circular markets. All interested parties will be informed and aware of benefits of a new circular system, and will know about the opportunities that may lead them to new circular international markets, implementation of new technologies or becoming a part of a new international, circular automotive network.
