We are not certified FCE experts. These company analyses are based on our current knowledge of the subject.

Her background

After a PhD in astrophysics at the University of Hamburg in Germany, Federica specialised in environmental management at the Sant'Anna college in Pisa.

Federica has worked in research around Smart Cities and Energy Efficiency before joining Cyrkl in June 2022 as a Consulting Team Leader Italy.

Her work at Cyrkl

As a consultant at Cyrkl, Federica manages different types of projects in Italy. 

Her main work being consulting, her aim is to find solutions to optimise the waste management of the clients (upstream sourcing/prevention and optimisation of outgoing waste flows). She also manages sales assistance projects in which she helps companies to sell their waste by putting them in touch with other interested companies.

As Cyrkl is a service company, "performance of use" does not have the same definition as for a company selling physical products. For the latter, the aim is no longer to be focus on the physical product but on the needs it meets, its performance. To achieve this performance, the company will have to include additional services in its offer (maintenance, education, research programs, etc.). In this way, the company will be able to gradually shift its revenues towards the service offer and move away from volume sales.

For service companies such as Cyrkl, with no physical products, we will focus more on the contractualisation part with the customer and the content of the service offer. The aim is to know whether the company is focused on the number of services provided or the quality/performance of these services.

As waste treatment has become expensive for companies and inefficiently organised, the performance that Cyrkl wishes to achieve is the following:

To optimize in the most efficient way possible (local solution, re-use before recycling, ...) the waste flows of the companies so that they make environmental and financial savings.

Cyrkl's main performance critera are both environmental and financial savings that the client company makes following the implementation of new technical solutions and inter-company partnerships since these two savings usually go end in end. Cyrkl's clients can make financial and environmental savings by reducing their upstream waste (reduced treatment costs) or by optimising their downstream flows (resale of waste as resources). 

Cyrkl's contracting model is based on a fixed and a variable part which is determined at the beginning of the contract. This variable part is a percentage of the total savings made by the client. It is a percentage based on the performance; the more the client makes financial savings through waste reduction/optimization, the more Cyrkl earns money. This variable part is a mutual commitment to create a common interest in moving towards quality solutions.

To reach performance, simply implementing new technical solutions is not enough. Cyrkl offers additional services which, according to Federica, are essential. Among these additional services, Cyrkl takes time to train staff and make them aware of the importance of environmental considerations in their activity.

As Cyrkl is a consulting company, it does not require a lot of material resources. Therefore, the company operates through a set of intangible resources emerging from all the company's employees.

An intangible resource is well present and identified by Cyrkl: confidence. Indeed, Federica explained to us how her business is based on the confidence of her clients towards her. Confidence is the key resource to be able to cooperate in order to find relevant solutions. Federica mentioned the difficulty of establishing this confidence with new clients. It is therefore a process that can take time to build at the beginning. According to Federica, this means visiting the company's plant in person, meeting people and showing them the benefits that Cyrkl's work could have. Federica tries to show how her skills could be useful and doesn't hesitate to present her work on projects realized with other similar actors. This gives credibility and allows the company to have an idea of what can be done. Federica has some clients that want to renew their contract after they did one project with Cyrkl. This shows how important it is to take time to build the confidence in order to install a long-term relationship !

Some positive externalities have been identified through Federica's consulting activity: 

• Her activity allows a better management of industrial waste and its reduction. This action is therefore beneficial for the territory and allows in particular to decongest landfills and to reduce the sending of waste to other countries. Indeed, these exported waste can have an impact on local populations (health and well-being) and their environment (impact on biodiversity, soil, water). This positive externality is implicit in Cyrkl's activity.

• Her activity also allows the client companies to consume less raw materials because they will use the waste of others as resources. This means less extraction of materials, less production of C02 and less destruction of biodiversity...

In a FCE logic, the goal for Cyrkl would be to succeed in finding to whom these positive externalities could benefit in order to finance a part of its offer. 

Cooperation at Cyrkl comes in three main forms:  

• Via the connection that Cyrkl creates between several actors so that they exchange their waste/resources. The goal is to create a link between these actors so that they can find a common ground on the sale of their waste/resources. Cyrkl is therefore a facilitator to allow an industrial symbiosis as sustainable as possible. 

• The cooperation is also present in the consulting activity with clients who need help on the management/reduction of their waste. This cooperation is not easy to set up at the beginning. Especially with new clients who can be quite reluctant. The work of the consultant is therefore to progressively install a solid trust with the client. 

At the beginning of a project, the consultant tries to understand as well as possible the client need going to the company's site to really understand how things work on the ground. To understand the processes, the stakes, to collect data... This exchange between the two parties will continue throughout the project (meetings every three weeks, regular exchanges by phone or email...). 

The co-construction of the solution with the client will be less important than at the beginning of the project because for most of them, the work they give to Cyrkl are tasks they do not want to do. But clients are still interested in seeing the progress of the project and they are open to discussion whenever the Cyrkl consultant is facing blocking points. The consultant will always include the client in the reflexion because he is the expert in his field.

Often, at the end of a project, the client realizes the positive impact that the project had (mainly from an economic point of view but also environmental). Genrally, the financial savings generated are sometimes reinvested by the company in the research of more advanced solutions with Cyrkl.

• Cyrkl collaborates with other actors that can help them to find solutions for their clients. For example they have partners that are working on technologies to improve the process of a company (better equipment to reduce waste...). So they can put in contact the client and their partner to implement a better solution. They also have partnership with a chemistry lab (in Florence) that helps them to analyse the waste (chemical properties) of their clients. It helps Cyrkl to know if the waste needs any type of certification (hazardous or not), if this waste must be treated, has to go in a landfill... The client will get a discount if they ask Cyrkl to rely on the chemistry lab. In the other way around, the chemistry lab can say to their clients to go to Cyrkl to improve the management or the reduction of that waste.

Cyrkl presentation

• Money remains the universal language (performance based on financial savings). It is difficult to set targets for reductions in tonnes of waste or carbon impact (which is what is important). The correlation between these reductions and their associated financial gains is not obvious. 

• Waste management sector has never been opimized to reduce waste quantities before (since waste management companies are usually interested in having more and more waste to treat).

Because Cyrkl is a service compny, it was a little more difficult for us to make connections with FCE at first. But as we dug deeper into Federica's consulting work, we began to see a potential. 

The contractualization, based partly on the performance (financial savings the client can achieve through better management and waste reduction), is interesting. Thus, both parties are committed to a performance, which encourages them to work collectively and intelligently to achieve it. However, we believe that, to better match FCE, the performance indicator could be more focused on what is most valuable; waste reduction (the best waste is the one that is not created).

We have clearly identified the central role of confidence between the consultant and the clients. This intangible resource is crucial in Federica's work. We understood that it is not easy to build this confidence at the beginning, that it takes time to set up, but that it allows to set the foundations of the cooperation. Federica and her clients can thus co-construct a solution adapted to the client's needs in the best possible conditions. 

Cyrkl's activity generates positive externalities on society and the environment. We managed to detect some of them but they are not really taken into account at their right value. We therefore perceive the interest that Cyrkl could have to integrate these positive externalities, beneficial to other actors of the territory, in their offer.

Finally, we felt Federica's real passion for her work and for all the issues related to waste, especially in Italy. She tries to focus on the quality of her consulting work rather than quantity.

We would like to make it clear here that there is no question of negative criticism of this project. The aim is to imagine a fictional story about he development of a similar company through the FCE concepts. It is also a way to inspire people in a concrete way.

We are in 2030, Cyrkl has continued its efforts. These efforts have become more productive, more relevant and more visible to more and more local actors thanks to the framework provided by the FCE...

Cyrkl has become a specialist in the prevention of industrial waste on a territorial scale.

The cost of waste treatment in Italy has become a significant issue for companies, which are now urgently faced with the need to reduce the amount of waste they produce.

Cyrkl helps companies to avoid waste by offering a comprehensive range of services:

• First, the training and awareness-raising for clients' employees about the impacts of waste (organisation of landfill visits, broadcasting of films/documentary).

• Secundly, a long-term support for the client on the issue of waste. The client is included in the process of thinking about how to avoid the creation of waste. More and more clients are becoming involved in cooperation with Cyrkl. Cyrkl's consultants, who have been educated on FCE, do not hesitate to go further by opening up discussions about their clients' business model.

The contractualization process with the clients has changed. It is now based on waste reduction performance over a given time and territory. Cyrkl has been able to demonstrate the positive impact of its activities on the territories (relieving landfill congestion, public health, etc.). The beneficiaries municipality and health insurance system of the territory are now financially involved in the contract between Cyrkl and its client. Clients wishing to reduce their waste-related costs are no longer the only beneficiaries of Cyrkl's activity. The company organises regular brainstorming sessions with the various players involved to find the most efficient solutions to the waste problem.

Of course, some waste remains unavoidable, such as toxic waste and certain industrial scraps. Thus, Cyrkl's marketplace now only treats those and helps to bring together the various stakeholders in a waste-resources approach. Cyrkl's role is to create win-win relationships, as often as possible on a local basis.

When it comes to toxic waste, Cyrkl works closely with a number of laboratories and treatment centres. The aim is to find alternatives to the creation of toxic waste and, if need be, to treat it in the best possible way.

French similar initiatives 

• ATRE: Originally a resource centre, it has broadened its range of services to raise awareness about waste issues and, in particular, how it can be reused.