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Scope
This leadership dialogue will explore how to use materials more sustainably to enable the energy and digital transition and build resilience in sectors such as textiles and plastics. It will highlight scalable best practices, policy levers and the importance of social safeguards.
The shift to low-carbon energy — involving solar, wind and batteries for energy storage — and a growing reliance on digital solutions is increasing demand for minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth elements. This is raising environmental, social and supply chain risks. It also presents significant challenges for industries and the economies that depend on natural resources.
The dialogue will explore how circular value chains can reduce these impacts through sustainable production and sourcing, the use of secondary raw materials, recycling, product-life extension and the creation of fairer markets. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a powerful enabler of this transition. It could support everything from material traceability and digital product passports to predictive maintenance and supply chain optimization.
Rising textile demand intensifies resource use, waste and pollution, while the plastics sector presents parallel challenges across its lifecycle. Addressing these requires public-private action to eliminate unnecessary waste, promote reuse and recycling, improve product design, including moving away from unnecessary, single and short-lived products, promote safer chemical use, and harmonize policies as drivers of systemic change. This requires cooperation across the full life cycle of materials, increased transparency, improved disclosure and the embrace of initiatives like the Global Circularity Protocol for Business.
North-South dynamics will be addressed, including unequal infrastructure and technology access that hinder circularity in the Global South. The dialogue will explore how current global models risk reinforcing extractive relationships and the need to elevate South-led solutions. It will also look at how extractive patterns can be reimagined through South-led innovation.
