Waste Management and Circularity Deep Dive Webinar

Why It Matters

By centralizing vetted metrics and strategic guidance, Iris Plus enables investors to quantify and report circular‑economy impacts, accelerating capital allocation toward more sustainable waste practices.

Key Takeaways

• Iris Plus offers free, searchable resources for waste‑circularity impact measurement.
• Four goals: minimize waste, optimize infrastructure, extend product life, ensure worker equity.
• Metrics are curated from standards, tagged with SDG links and glossary definitions.
• Live demo shows building a custom framework and selecting relevant outcomes.
• Circular design and waste‑worker justice are highlighted as top stakeholder priorities.

Summary

The webinar introduced Iris Plus’s new waste‑management and circularity impact theme, a free online hub that aggregates measurement tools, peer‑reviewed evidence, and strategic guidance for investors and practitioners. Hosted by Panagotto Balfusia, the session walked participants through the platform’s structure, emphasizing four strategic goals—minimizing waste through circular design, optimizing waste‑infrastructure, extending product lifetimes, and ensuring equitable treatment of waste workers. Key insights included a taxonomy that breaks each strategic goal into concrete outcomes, linked to specific metrics drawn from global standards and tagged with SDG alignments. The platform also provides glossaries, metadata, and curated references to help users translate technical indicators into stakeholder‑friendly narratives. A live demonstration showed how to build a custom framework, select relevant outcomes, and access the underlying data. Poll results revealed performance measurement as the top reason participants attend such webinars, underscoring demand for robust impact KPIs. The presenter highlighted that circular design and waste‑worker justice resonated most with the audience, and the demo illustrated how the site surfaces evidence and metrics for these priorities. For investors, the platform offers a ready‑made toolkit to embed waste‑circularity metrics into due‑diligence, portfolio monitoring, and reporting, thereby aligning capital flows with emerging regulatory expectations and sustainability objectives.

Original Description

As global waste continues to grow, surpassing 2 billion tonnes annually, investors have a critical role to play in advancing more effective waste systems and scaling circular solutions.

In this webinar, the GIIN’s IRIS+/IMM team provided a practical deep dive into the Waste Management & Circularity impact theme. The session walks through key tools and guidance available within IRIS+, with a focus on how investors can strengthen data collection and implement more rigorous impact measurement and management (IMM) practices.

You’ll learn how the Waste Management & Circularity theme can help identify high-potential investment opportunities and assess contributions to real-world outcomes — from circular design and product life extension to more efficient and inclusive waste systems.

The webinar also includes audience Q&A, addressing common challenges and considerations for applying these resources in practice.

Explore how to apply IRIS+ to your investment strategy and drive measurable impact.