FinServ & Environmental Sustainability: Top 40 Influencers

As the European Union seeks to transition to a ‘circular economy’, the policy focus in 2021 will turn to products: how they are designed, and why so many seem to be made to throw away. The European Commission wants to transform the way we produce and consume products. And when an initial strategy to do so wasn’t delivering as much as hoped, the EU executive gave it another shot earlier this year. The ‘Circular Economy action plan 2.0’, unveiled in March, is a renewed attempt to change the way we produce, use and dispose of goods. Like its predecessor launched five years ago, it doesn’t contain hard legislation yet but instead sets a series of goals, like halving municipal waste by 2030, some of which will be translated later on in hard legal requirements. Main ideas include giving consumers a new “right to repair” for computers and smartphones, establishing green criteria for construction products, updating existing resource use indicators, and planning a Sustainable Product Policy Framework.

Plastics have enjoyed exceptional growth in production for decades and are used extensively across a multitude of sectors including packaging, construction, electronics, automotive and agriculture. Prompted by concerns over plastic waste generation and impacts on terrestrial and marine ecosystems, in 2018 the European Commission published a strategy on plastics which was followed by legislative actions such as ban of certain single-use plastic items. In 2019 out of about 29 million tonnes of plastic collected in the EU the majority (68%) was either incinerated for energy recovery or ended up in landfills.  There has been a debate for some time about whether the concept of chemical recycling can be among the solutions for managing plastic waste. Chemical recycling technologies have not yet reached the market at scale although recently there have been several announcements for the development of new plastic recycling plans in Europe and abroad. Objective of this event will be to bring together stakeholders from the plastics value chain to discuss whether and under what conditions chemical recycling technologiesaviercould make a contribution to the EU’s circularity and decarbonisation objectives.  

When investing, your capital is at risk. — The femtech market is set to reach $60 billion USD by 2027. Why? Because it provides crucial innovations to improve the health and happiness of 50% of the global population – the women that menstruate, and those that don’t want to. Those that go through pregnancy and those who want to prevent it. Those who are tackling menopause, or teenage hormonal fluctuations, or new motherhood and want to understand and respond to the totally natural changes their bodies are undergoing. The list goes on. While femtech used to refer to the uterus and little more, its definition has expanded to infant nutrition, egg freezing, childcare support, menstrual tracking, data-driven health products and more. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the business leading the space are founded by women – women who noticed gaps in the market and recognised the expansive healthcare and lifestyle needs of billions of women worldwide that have traditionally been left behind by advancements in medicine and technology. And yet, only 10% of global investment goes into female-founded businesses – despite the fact that female-led businesses are more likely to exit than their male-founded counterparts. This is something that all of us in the investment space are looking to change – and it starts by recognising the ambitious, game-changing startups dedicated to improving the lives of women, at every phase of their lives, around the world. &SISTERS is one of these. Founded by daughter mother duo, Lucy and Claire, &SISTERS is developing the menstrual health ecosystem of the future. They recognised that a person menstruating uses 11,000 period products in their lifetime on average – and most are completely unaware that the products they reach for in the period care aisle are laden with chemicals and plastic. So, they set out…