2025 Outlook: A letter from the President

Dear Valued CI Supporters:

I hope everyone is enjoying their start to Spring 2025!  Circular Indiana has been busy at work on some very exciting events and projects that I wanted to share.  I also wanted to take this opportunity to say THANK YOU for your continued support.  The work we do would not be possible without you!  Take a minute to make a note of the upcoming event dates (in red) and try to join us – we would love to see you!

We are very excited to announce that our 2025 Circular Indiana Conference will be held on September 8, 2025 and will again be held at the Indiana Government Center.  We are lining up an impressive group of speakers and are confident it will again be an energetic and informative day collaborating on best practices and continued planning to advance a circular economy in our state.  Please mark your calendars now, and watch for registration emails to come!

While our commitment to education is visible in everything we do, this year that commitment is taking center stage as we work towards a longer term vision for circular advancement in our state.  Circular Indiana has been engaged with Purdue University’s Environmental and Ecological Engineering Department assessing the landscape and laying the groundwork for the potential creation of a Circular Economy  “Hub”.   The goal of a hub would be to foster not only education, but also collaboration and innovation toward circularity in our state.  This project is a comprehensive and nuanced one that will likely be multi-generational, but we are optimistic about its ability to help with our advancement toward circularity along the way.  Stay tuned as this will be a project to watch! 

With Earth day around the corner, we are again pleased to bring you an informative and collaborated Earth Day Webinar, to be held on April 22, 2025 at 1:00 PM, We will be discussing Battery Circularity and Extended Producer Responsibility.  Watch for registration details, we hope you will join us

Circular Indiana engaged community members at the Pacers STEM Fest on March 22, at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, at which we educated kids and adults through games and discussions on waste disposal and the benefits of circular practices.  If you missed this event, join us on May 4, 2025 at the JCC Indianapolis Earth Day Event!  We will continue to be active in the community and hope to see you along the way. 

We’d like to thank Honda USA Foundation for their incredible support with Circular Indiana educating the community of Greensburg Indiana about the importance of composting.  On March 4, 2025, we conducted an educational event at the Greensburg High School and collected 30 pounds of food waste for composting from the various lunch periods. If this waste had been sent to a landfill, the greenhouse gas impact would have been the equivalent of driving a car 114 miles.  If you consider this was just one day, at one school, it is not hard to imagine just what impact it would make to implement composting at all schools, on all days!  We will also be conducting  additional composting events in Greensburg in the coming months so stay tuned.     

As you can see it’s already been a busy year and we still have so much more to do!  I am so encouraged and grateful for the support you continue to give Circular Indiana, and for our ability to make a collective impact.  If you would like to be more actively involved with Circular Indiana, let us know!  We are actively seeking volunteers so please reach out at Info@Circularin.org for more information. Thank you again for all your support.  We will continue to be in touch about these and other projects and events in the coming months.

Sincerely, 

Pam Francis, Circular Indiana Board President

April 10, 2025