MICS Finder to help businesses in the transition towards circular economy

Imagine your company is having issues in waste  management, or looking for LCA options, or working on an Environmental Product Declaration, or wishing to test or develop new circular materials; in a word, you are looking for materials-related circular solutions: where would you look for them?

To answer this question, Materially has conceived, together with its partners, Materially Bilbao and R2M Solution, a digital tool for businesses to support the decision-making process concerning material innovation for circularity, under the name M.I.C.S. Finder (Material Innovation for Circular Solutions).

MICS Finder helps in finding useful tools and services such as material databases, technologies, certification protocols, LCA providers, matching platforms and much more, all concerning circularity and material innovation.
MICS Finder is conceived as a database of Providers of Material Innovation Circular Solutions. It is basically an extensive repository of resources inviting its Users to consider aspects they may not have taken into account in the first place. We envisioned the users of this service as people and teams working in the R&D departments, designers,

project managers in the field of innovation or business development, but also teams involved in production and purchasing activities.
If, as an example, your company is having issues in the management of residual waste coming from production of goods, MICS Finder helps in finding solutions such as marketplaces and other match-making platform where that residual waste can be allocated, exchanged or purchased by other manufacturers looking for that raw material as a resource to generate new value.
If your company is trying to navigate the various options regarding the Life Cycle Analysis of a manufactured product or is working on EPD, MICS Finder helps in finding useful tools and services such as LCA modeling and reporting softwares, facilitating the collection and analysis of sustainability performance data.
Moreover, if you envision your business as a Provider of such useful resources in the transition towards a circular economy, you can register your service within MICS Finder and, right after a validation phase, your service will be accessible to all users.

MICS Finder has been developed within DIGIPRIME, a digital manufacturing platform for connected circular smart factories. Digiprime is a EU-funded project part of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, whose aim is to create a federated digital platform for the preservation and dissemination of technical knowledge across industries. The project involves a consortium of partners from different countries and sectors, including private companies, universities, research institutes, and technology developers.

Example of tools for data monitoring systems(campaign_creators on unsplash.com)

The main limitation of the current Circular Economy model is in fact  that manufacturing and de-and remanufacturing operations are carried out independently, without sharing information and economic benefits; this issue can be overcome only by rethinking the current European industrial system into new collaborative and sustainable value networks.
The EU-funded DigiPrime Project has the scope to solve this current information asymmetry among value-chain stakeholders by providing secure access to material, component and product information, thus unlocking cross-sectorial circular value-chains.
The objective of DigiPrime will be achieved through the development of a digital platform that will unlock new circular business models based on the data-enhanced recovery and re-use of functions and materials from high value-added post-use products, with a cross-sectorial approach.
The project, coordinated by Politecnico di Milano, involves 36 partners from 12 countries and is being validated through 6 pilots (batteries, mechatronics & electronics, composites & techno-polymers, textile, cross-regional value chains and circular innovation hubs integration) and further detailed in 20 use cases covering different European industrial sectors.

The whole  project started in January 2021 and will run for four years. Stay tuned for the latest updates!