Recycling, Circular Economy & Sustainable Technologies
Three days where the people who invent, build, run, fund and regulate recycling share the same rooms. Bring a process that works, a pilot that stalled, or a question you cannot answer alone.
Why waste is still a design problem
Every product has a beginning: a designer, a material choice, a factory, a shipping route. Very few have a planned ending. When nobody decides what happens after the last use, the default answer is a landfill, an incinerator or a river.
Recycling has moved a long way from the single blue bin. Today it involves catalysts that break plastics back into their building blocks, processes that pull lithium and rare metals out of dead batteries, microbes and enzymes that digest what machines cannot, and software that can see, sort and trace materials faster than any person.
The science is moving quickly. The harder question is how fast it can leave the laboratory and become something a city, a company or a household can actually use. RECYNOVA 2027 is the place to ask that question in the open.
Expect a programme that is rigorous about the science and honest about the obstacles.
What decides whether an idea survives
The first RECYNOVA brought researchers, operators and sustainability professionals together to ask what is possible in recycling and the circular economy. The 2nd edition builds on that. It keeps the full scientific range of recycling and the circular economy, and gives more room to the questions that decide whether a good idea survives: who will fund it, who will permit it, who will buy what it makes, and how anyone will know it worked.
A conference for every link in the chain
Recycling is never one profession. It is the work of all of these, in the same rooms on purpose. The professor and the plant manager, the founder and the city official, the graduate student and the chief sustainability officer share the same coffee queues and the same poster hall.
Best Poster Awards
To recognise the outstanding work presented at RECYNOVA 2027, we are pleased to announce two Best Poster Awards for our participants.
The review committee will select the winners after evaluating all selected posters presented at the conference.
Best Poster Award
Best Poster Award
What you will take home
Sharper ideas, and specific people to call. A materials scientist meets the operator who can test the process. A city planner speaks to the founder whose sorting system might suit the local plant. A student hears directly from the leaders whose work shaped the field.
Researchers
Find out where your work meets real demand.
Companies
See what is coming before it reaches the market.
Policymakers
Hear what works on the ground and what only works on paper.
Investors
Meet teams that have proved their technology and are ready for the next stage.
Most of all, you will spend three days with people who treat waste as a solvable problem.
Eight tracks, one circular future
Select a track to see the topics covered in its sessions.
Distinguished Speakers
Explore insights from leading experts and researchers. Each track will feature distinguished presentations from academia and industry
Doug Kobold
Executive Director California Product Stewardship Council (CPSC), Sacramento, CA
To be announced
Invited speaker, Circular economy
To be announced
Invited speaker, Circular economy
To be announced
Invited speaker, AI and smart systems
To be announced
Invited speaker, Climate and policy
To be announced
Invited speaker, Wastewater
To be announced
Invited speaker, Biotechnology
To be announced
Invited speaker, Industry and startups
Program at a glance
Three days of keynotes, oral sessions, flash talks and posters, followed by a virtual session for delegates who cannot travel.
Sorting challenge
Sorting decides the quality of everything a recycling plant produces. Two rounds of eight: sort real items into four material streams, then test yourself with the science quiz.
Material in the wrong stream lowers the value of what a plant produces. The AI and Smart Waste Systems and Advanced Recycling tracks cover how plants fix it.
Choose the right bin.
Find your path
Tell us who you are and see how to use the three days.
Ways to take part
Present, lead, support or simply learn. Choose the role that fits.
Present your work
Give an oral talk or a poster. Have an early idea? A short flash talk suits new ideas with early results.
Speak or chair
Leaders in the field can speak, chair a session or join a discussion.
Sponsor or partner
Put your organization in front of this community.
Attend as a delegate
Move between sessions as your interests lead you. Cannot travel? The virtual session keeps you in the conversation.
Why Santa Clara
Santa Clara sits in the heart of Silicon Valley, among universities, research labs, technology companies and the investors who back new ventures. That puts the people who invent recycling technology within reach of the people who can test, fund and scale it. California also leads on recycling and product stewardship policy, and the area is served by the San Jose and San Francisco airports.
Join us
There is no shortage of conferences where people present results and go home. RECYNOVA 2027 is built for the people who want their results to travel further than that. You will find the people who can help.
Rethink. Rebuild. Recover.
18–20 October 2027 | Santa Clara, CA, USA