ESG-aligned companies may access a $53 trillion market by 2025

By Fabrício Junqueira, writer at Betini Communications, press office of Circular Movement.

The term ESG has gained great visibility thanks to a growing concern in the financial market about corporate sustainability, in which the decisions that a company takes on environmental, social and governance affairs have come to be considered essential in risk analysis and investment decision making.

Indeed! The market is watching companies that take this precaution. A Bloomberg Agency survey estimates that the ESG agenda should attract $53 trillion in investments by 2025. That is, in addition to being a trend, adapting to ESG is increasingly becoming a prerequisite for competitiveness.

Faced with this scenario, where capitalizing responsibly is becoming the norm, the Circular Movement (CM), a multi-sectoral initiative that brings together people and organizations committed to disseminating the concepts of the Circular Economy. It emerges as a reference in the matter, introducing this concept of economy, through educational and practical actions, such as the Circular Academy, a course offered on the ecosystem's trilingual platform, aimed at everyone who wants to understand the challenges and opportunities of transforming the economy from linear to circular. The on-line course “Introduction to Circular Economy” is available in Portuguese, Spanish and English, lasting approximately six hours, divided into seven modules.

The Circular Movement uses education to inform about challenges and opportunities in the transition from a linear to a circular economy. Photo: Misha Voguel

Still on the educational issue, Circular Movement offers actions such as Circular Challenge, an event that helps to train teachers and encourage students, mainly from the 9th grade of elementary school, high school and university students, to develop innovative scientific initiation projects and prototypes that offer solutions for a world without trash. The Circular Movement also promotes the Prize for a World without Waste, which now has an international edition, in addition to the book by Muti, the CM's messenger, aimed at children and youth. On the platform, the audiences can access information materials, videos, news, and even a world map with initiatives related to the precepts of the Circular Economy.

“It is important to emphasize, in addition to our actions, that the company or educational institution that is a partner of the CM, can also count on an ecosystem of companies and schools with the same goals, creating connections and enhancing networking amongst the participants”, explains the CEO of Circular Movement, Vinicius Saraceni.

Dow Latam

Circular Movement, over the course of its three years of existence, ended up bringing important partnerships, they are companies that also end up becoming a reference in ESG, as is the case of Dow, pioneering partner of Movimento Circular, which in Brazil currently employs more than 2 thousand employees and works in materials science.

For Giancarlo Fanucchi, Dow's sustainability manager for Brazil in the packaging and specialty plastics business, the main challenge is to make the industry, as a whole, more sustainable, especially for a packaging and plastics manufacturer. “The company invests in new product technologies, partnerships along the value chain, business models and waste management infrastructure to discover and scale sustainable packaging solutions that extend the life of materials and the resources to develop them”.

“It is a journey that calls us to rethink our consumption patterns, to design products and packaging with circularity in mind and to find innovative solutions to the global challenges we face. And it is through collaboration and knowledge sharing that we will be able to accelerate this transformation. In this sense, the Circular Movement is our reference, we see the future of the Circular Economy as a powerful opportunity to change our way of producing and consuming, promoting a more regenerative and sustainable approach”, adds Fanucchi.

Among practical actions of ESG concepts, Dow inaugurated in 2021 its first innovation center, in Jundiaí, in the inlands of São Paulo, where practices are applied to drive sustainable innovation in the packaging industry in Latin America, focusing on technologies from the food and beverage segment.

The partners of the Circular Movement make achievements like the book 'The Fabulous Journey of Muti and the Libelautas' possible. Photo: Misha Voguel

Fox Industry

Another important ally of the Circular Movement is the Fox Industry, which offers solutions for recycling, energy efficiency, logistics, remanufacturing, technical analysis of quality and information technology for other companies. Fox works on the elaboration, follow-up and execution of energy efficiency, environmental management and recycling systems management projects, offering these benefits to industries and companies.

“We are a circular economy company, we have in our DNA the latency of the ESG “E” that is applied in the company's core business, but the “E” alone is not enough to achieve goals, raise awareness and transform society, in view of this we work on social issues and governance with our team, from hiring, developing our own inclusive projects or on demand from partners, activities supported by ethics, diversity and good market practices. For us, the Circular Movement offers a very important job, as it also ends up joining people and companies in hubs for the dissemination of the circular economy and knowledge, mainly through its didactic platforms”, says Marcelo Souza, CEO of Fox.

On the celebration of the 3rd anniversary of the Circular Movement, events and hands-on experiences were conducted. Photo: Misha Voguel

Search for new partners

In August this year, the Circular Movement celebrated three years and is intensifying opportunities for companies and institutions that want to learn more about the work carried out in favor of the transition from the linear to the circular economy. On the CM website, there is a “become a member” section, where future partners will be able to learn about the benefits of being part of this ecosystem of people, institutions, industries and companies that are committed to a more sustainable world and a future without waste, based on the education and culture, the adoption of new behaviors and the development of new processes, products and attitudes.

Created in 2020, amid the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Circular Movement is a collaborative ecosystem that is committed to encouraging the transition from linear to circular economy. The idea that every resource can be reused and transformed is the motto of the circular economy, the basic concept of the movement. Circular Movement is an open initiative that promotes collaborative spaces with the mission of reaching more people and places.