The circular economy makes a significant contribution to sustainability and resource efficiency by providing high-quality secondary raw materials. However, this requires close cooperation between the various players in the value chain. Here, digitization offers new opportunities to support this cooperation through powerful and secure information management. This is the topic of the project “Digital Information Management in the Actor Chain of the Circular Economy in the Manufacturing Industry – DigInform”.

Until now, data has been viewed primarily in terms of efficient storage. However, the secure and trustworthy exchange of data between the various actors and the networking of data is even more crucial in order to leverage the full potential of the circular economy to increase resource efficiency. In the “DigInform” project, the specific requirements for the information management system are being determined from various perspectives: those of the waste-generating companies, the waste-recycling companies and the buyers of secondary raw materials. For this purpose, further experts and practitioners from the different groups will be included via workshops and interviews. These perspectives will be brought together in a cross-actor concept of information management, which will form the basis of the data technology implementation. The “TrustDBle” platform, which is built on an intelligent combination of blockchain and database technology, will be used as a common secure data basis. The effects of information management with regard to climate protection and environmental impacts will be analyzed and evaluated with regard to the potential for the circular economy as a whole. The practical testing and validation of the information management system will take place in the context of real corporate structures of a manufacturing company of the chemical industry as well as a waste management company.