La Rioja, birthplace of the first circular economy center in Europe

The capital of Rioja has long been among the top national rankings for recycling per inhabitant, which is why – among other reasons – Ecoembes thought of Logroño to start its innovation and technology projects, and to promote entrepreneurial talent with the aim of fostering the change from a model based on the linear economy – of use and throw away – to a circular one, in which waste is recycled to become new resources.

Thus, in 2017, the capital of Rioja became home to the first circular economy center in Europe: TheCircularLab. Ecoembes established an open innovation center in Logroño where the recycling of the future is thought about and developed.

TheCircularLab develops and tests initiatives in the community of La Rioja that are then exported throughout Spain, and it does so from, mainly, four lines of action:

Citizen knowledge: Through applications such as Aire or RECICLOS, it offers both information and incentives for recycling.

Ecodesign: Look for packaging that, from the moment of manufacturing, considers what and how it can be used after its first useful life and whether it will exist.

Waste technologies (SmartWaste): Develop intelligent waste management projects, so that the waste collection, selection and treatment process is as technological, sustainable and efficient as possible.

Entrepreneurship. It is the area where the ideation, incubation and acceleration of sustainable initiatives is helped through projects. In TheCircularLab, startups have found a space to work collaboratively with external partners (such as other startups, companies or administrations).

Rioja example

One of the startups with which TheCircularLab has collaborated and has contributed to its takeoff is the Riojan company SpectralGeo. This company initially oriented its steps towards precision agriculture, through capturing images and then processing them and with Artificial Intelligence the necessary data was extracted to optimize tasks such as irrigation, fertilization or even harvesting at the optimal time.

TheCircularLab opened a new field – and a new business avenue – by asking SpectralGeo to adapt the algorithm used in agriculture to the scope of the circular economy, and specifically to gain efficiency in its recycling plants.

The company accepted the challenge and Carlos Tarragona, CEO and founder of SpectralGeo, admits that this decision – and the relationship with TheCircularLab – has borne more than positive results because, among other things, it has allowed him to start working in the industrial sector where he already They obtain 30% of their turnover (the other 70% is still agriculture) and “go from an initial staff of 2 workers to the 17 that make up the current human team.”

The challenge ahead is great because technology opens up new fields. «The Varpel artificial vision system is in continuous development and the taking of images is now better and faster, to the point that currently, with one camera they take the same images for which they previously needed several, and the processing that previously took “Several seconds is already reduced to microseconds,” explains Tarragona, which opens up new fields that can be explored ‘accompanied’ by TheCircularLab.

Young talent

To nurture and train young talent, TheCircularLab has developed its CircularTalentLab, a training program in which selected young people work on circular economy, recycling and innovation for six months.

Through this route (and others), young talent, often from Rioja, arrives at TheCircularLab, as is the case of David Ceniceros. He did his internship at TheCircularLab when he finished his degree in Business Administration at the University of La Rioja and that is where “the circular economy bug caught me.” After a while he decided to take a step further and established himself as a freelancer offering a consulting for companies, advising them in the field of training and innovation in sustainability, while also looking for entrepreneurs with whom to carry out projects.

In 2022, the opportunity arose to return to TheCircularLab to be part of the entrepreneurship team “and I didn’t hesitate because it was like closing the circle,” explains David Ceniceros, “I was still doing the same thing I did on my own, but now where do I do it?” “They had taught everything, it was like going there to give back part of what they had given me,” says Ceniceros, who now leads the innovation methodology area and who does not hesitate to state categorically that Ecoembes and TheCircularLab “is a luxury for La Rioja».