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Choose your Track

At the Circular Society Conference 2026, participants choose one track to follow for the entire day, enabling deeper exploration, shared understanding, and meaningful connections with others who share your interests.

Each track consists out of two parts. In the Exploration Session a societal stakeholder and a researcher will share their contributions to circularity, discuss knowledge gaps, and collaboratively refine questions to create a shared map of opportunities for impact. In the Focus Session, we’ll refine and prioritize input from the exploration tracks, highlighting the most impactful issues and shaping a shortlist of topics ready for action.

Track 1: Informed and Sustainable Decision Making in Surgery

Speakers:

UMC Utrecht

When patients need surgery under anaesthesia, they typically visit a pre-anaesthesia assessment clinic where they learn about their options. For several surgical procedures, patients can choose between general anaesthesia and locoregional anaesthesia, such as spinal anaesthesia or peripheral nerve blocks. From a medical perspective, outcomes for healthy patients are broadly comparable. 

From an environmental and cost perspective, however, the options are not equivalent. Indications suggest that locoregional anaesthesia may be the more sustainable choice in terms of material use, ecotoxicity of drugs and care time involved. Yet despite growing awareness among anaesthesiologists, patients are rarely actively involved in considering these differences. 

Guidelines from the Federation of Medical Specialists address sustainability, but insufficient data exists for the Dutch situation. It remains unclear whether and how patients should be informed about the environmental impact of their options, and whether such information would influence their choices. 

This track investigates whether patient education on environmental impact and costs can support more sustainable decision-making in anaesthesia, and if so, how this can be implemented in clinical practice. 

Track 2: Lifecycle Choices for Medical Devices

Speakers:

Marije Marsman - NVZ, Dutch Association of Hospitals

Dutch healthcare ranks among the best worldwide in terms of access, equity and clinical outcomes. At the same time, it accounts for approximately 13% of national material use and 4% of total waste streams. Reducing this environmental footprint without compromising quality of care is both an ecological and a societal priority. 

The UMC NL shortlist identifies 22 high-impact medical disposables with strong short-term reduction potential. Building on this, the NVZ initiated national "chain tables" around several product groups, including non-sterile gloves and procedural trays, both identified as high-impact products given the volumes in which they are used. 

This track addresses both short-term circular interventions (refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle) and the long-term transition towards low-impact, biobased and green chemistry materials in healthcare supply chains. 

Track 3: Tackling the Housing Crisis with Fast and Circular Concepts

The Netherlands is under pressure to solve a major housing shortage. But how can we accelerate construction without compromising sustainability?

In this breakout session, we explore the powerful intersection of speed and circularity. While many current approaches focus on scaling up and speeding up building processes, circular construction is often overlooked, despite its potential to do both. Think modular building, bio-based materials, and design for disassembly: solutions that not only reduce environmental impact but can also streamline construction. We will have special attention for how digital tools like AI, data platforms, and digital twins can unlock smarter collaboration, faster decision-making, and more efficient planning.

Join us to co-create bold, interdisciplinary ideas that tackle fragmented data, complex regulations, and supply chain challenges and help shape the future of fast, circular housing in the Utrecht Region.

Speakers: ROM Utrecht

Track 4: Mapping and Recovery of Critical Materials for Circular Construction

Speakers: ROM Utrecht

In an era of geopolitical tension, climate disruption, and fragile global markets, how can we ensure reliable access to the materials and services our societies depend on? This track explores the urgent need to strengthen supply chain resilience through greater transparency and circular thinking. Focusing on sectors like construction, where dependency on critical materials is high, we’ll examine how better insight into material flows and supplier networks can reduce vulnerabilities and support smarter, more sustainable decision-making.

Discover how circular strategies such as reuse, remanufacturing, and local sourcing can decrease reliance on scarce resources, while digital innovations, like data pipelines, material flow analysis, and risk dashboards, unlock new levels of understanding and control.

Join us to co-create interdisciplinary solutions that help governments and industries build secure, future-proof, and circular supply systems.

This conference is brought to your by the Institute 4 a Circular Society - Part of the EWUU Alliance