Secondary materials marketplaces (connecting industrial off-cuts and surplus to buyers)

Industry is the backbone of modern civilization, but it's also one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Manufacturing steel, cement, chemicals, and plastics doesn't just burn fossil fuels for energy — these processes often require fossil fuels as raw ingredients or release CO2 as an unavoidable part of the chemistry itself.

This creates a massive challenge. We can't simply swap in renewable electricity and call it solved. Heavy industry needs fundamentally different approaches: new chemistries, new materials, new ways of thinking about how we make things. The scale is enormous — industry accounts for about a quarter of global emissions — but so is the opportunity to transform how we build our world.

Our economy is built on a take-make-waste model: extract raw materials, make products, use them briefly, then throw them away. This linear approach wastes enormous amounts of materials and energy while creating mountains of waste. Most products are designed to be cheap and disposable rather than durable and repairable.

A circular economy keeps materials in use as long as possible, then recovers and regenerates them at the end of their service life. This requires fundamentally rethinking how we design, make, and use products. The potential is enormous — circular economy approaches could reduce global emissions by 45% while creating new business opportunities and reducing waste.

These platforms connect companies that have waste materials with others who can use them as inputs. Industrial off-cuts, surplus inventory, and byproducts that would otherwise go to landfill become valuable resources for other companies. Digital marketplaces use data and algorithms to match supply and demand across different industries and regions, creating new revenue streams while reducing waste and virgin material use.