Metals are present everywhere around us and are one of the major materials upon which our economies are built. Economic development is deeply coupled with the use of metals. During the 20th century, the variety of metal applications in society grew rapidly. In addition to mass applications such as steel in buildings and aluminium in planes, more and more different metals are in use for innovative technologies such as the use of the speciality metal indium in LCD screens. A lot of metals will be needed in the future. It will not be easy to provide them. In particular in emerging economies, but also in industrialised countries, the demand for metals is increasing rapidly. Mining and production activities expand, and with that also the environmental consequences of metal production. In this course, we will explore those consequences and we will also explore options to move towards a more sustainable system of metals production and use. We will focus especially on the options to reach a circular economy for metals: keeping metals in use for a very long time, to avoid having to mine new ones.

The shortage of energy resources, drinking water and clean air are problems that most of us have been hearing about for decades.We can create better filters, sort and recycle and look for more and better solutions. But we can also design in a way that avoids problems and doesn't just contribute to them. Listen to an inspiring TED talk by Professor Louise Vet to learn more.

Listen to the detailed and exciting story about the Cradle-to-Cradle model told by its founding fathers – chemist Michael Braungart and architect William McDonough. They suggest getting rid of the concept of 'waste' as we know it.The Cradle-to-Cradle model is about using the material of one product to develop another of a similar or even higher quality. One of the examples is Nike Considered, which is also described in the video.

Circle Economy is a social enterprise organised as a cooperative. This company is attempting to accelerate the transition to circularity through an action-focused, on-the-ground development of practical and scalable solutions and international campaigns. Circle Economy has already implemented its newly developed City Circle Scan to identify areas in the city that can make the most significant, tangible progress in realising a circular economy.

Can the global economy continue to grow without putting undue stress on its supply of natural resources? Andy Ridley, the CEO of Circle Economy, a research group advocating a revolutionary approach to sustainable business, shares practical examples and successful business models from the Netherlands.

This book, collected by the students of HAN University of Applied Sciences and Arnhem Business School, is an endless source of inspiration for those who want to run their businesses in a sustainable fashion. It contains actual business cases and the way company' s are anticipating relevant societal themes like circular economy, big data & business intelligence, financing the business, the connection with the customer and the brand.

One of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology's new buildings is as sustainable as possible, in as many respects as possible. It is a great example of modern eco-technology based on the Cradle-to-Cradle principle of closing as many different cycles (energy, water, nutrients) as is viable. These things together make up what can be called 'integrated sustainability', going far beyond a focus on just one or two individual aspects.

Circle Economy's Circle City Scan shows that adopting circularity can spike job creation, increase resource efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions throughout the City of Glasgow