Achieving a Sustainable Future: Collaborating to Advance the Circular Economy through Innovation

The circular economy refers to practices that optimize the use of scarce raw materials and reduce waste. At Hitachi, we're advancing towards a circular economy through not only innovation in product design, manufacturing processes and our business models but also by partnering with innovative startups through our corporate venturing business. 

Hitachi Ventures invests & connects startups with the vast network of Hitachi to accelerate their growth and impact. They search for the best solutions to address the world's technical, social and environmental challenges, initiating strategic collaborations between portfolio companies and Hitachi's business units to achieve mutual growth. 

In the film we delve into three Hitachi Ventures portfolio companies and explain how their innovations are helping us achieve a circular economy and ultimately advance to a sustainable future.

Ascend Elements - Transforming Battery Recycling 

Ascend Elements is an advanced and independent recycler that repurposes spent lithium-ion batteries and manufacturing scrap to produce high-performance recycled battery materials. 

Their patented Hydro-to-Cathode® process transforms old batteries into sustainable battery materials, eliminating nearly 15 traditional production steps, significantly cutting energy use and carbon emissions. 

Samsara Eco - Transforming Plastic Recycling 

Samsara Eco has developed an AI-driven enzymatic recycling process that breaks down any type of plastic to its original building blocks. Samsara's approach uniquely enables the infinite recycling of mixed plastics and textiles without compromising performance or price, while achieving a lower carbon footprint. 

Cyclic Materials - Transforming Rare Earth Elements Recycling 

Cyclic Materials has developed an advanced recycling process for rare earth elements (as used for magnets) that are critical for the electrical transformation. Traditionally, they are extremely hard to recycle but Cyclic Materials' two-step approach allows them to retrieve those high-value materials and thus create a more resilient supply chain while reducing the environmental impact of end-of-life products.

Through our partnerships, we are advancing sustainable manufacturing by developing cutting-edge processes that achieve circularity to create closed loop supply chains with output materials having equal or better performance than virgin materials.

Collaboration and innovation are crucial to achieve net zero. Hitachi Ventures partners with innovation startups to create sustainable solutions that benefit people and planet.

Learn more here.