Understanding waste as something valuable not only requires new systems but massive paradigm shifts too.

Today we talk to Maayke Damen about the work she is doing in this regard with her company, Excess Materials Exchange, a digital marketplace with the core goal of matching waste with its highest reuse assignation.

Maayke tells us about the research she began to do about taxing resources rather than labour and the potential this shift would present in the way products are purchased and disposed of. To tax in this new way, we would need a system to correctly identify the materials that make up products, and the work Maayke did to create this system was what led her to found EME.

From there, we dive into the inner workings of the EME marketplace platform and how it functions to identify waste and match it with its highest reuse destination.

Along with all this, we talk to Maayke about the challenges to implementing more circular waste management processes, highlighting the paradigm shift required for these shifts to occur, and the effectiveness EME presents toward this end being an impact rather than a profit-led company.

At the end of the day though, reusing waste does not just save the planet, but money too, and Maayke talks about how she has had to present her case from an economic rather than environmental perspective to actually get companies on board.

For all this and more about exciting developments in the narratives and technologies surrounding waste reuse, be sure to tune in.