Bringing about a sustainable and circular economy globally is an extremely complicated feat to achieve, considering all economic aspects and the range of differences between countries. The Green Industry Platform (GIP) is supporting efforts by focusing on a key fundamental and underpinning aspect of the circular economy approach – improving the uptake of resource efficiency by businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
To be able to engage directly with SME and SME stakeholders on resource efficiency, GIP launched the I-GO initiative in 2021. I-GO has been designed to enable SMEs to easily access best practice resource efficiency knowledge and support services and help SME stakeholders strengthen their impact and outreach to SMEs.
The initiative delivers on these objectives through two key components, I-GO Assistant and I-GO Network.
National and regional launch of the I-GO Assistant
The I-GO Assistant is an online self-assessment and navigation tool that rapidly determines an SME’s resource efficiency status based on its actions to date and taking into account location, business sector and size. The I-GO Assistant then provides a customized list of recommendations on how to improve the resource efficiency status and tailored selection of available knowledge (guidance, tools and case studies) and support services (training, technical assistance and financial solutions) to help implement the recommendations.
Following a pilot phase in 2021, GIP officially launched the I-GO Assistant in mid-2022 across three regions: Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe, the Caucuses and Central Asia (EECCA).
The launch of the I-GO Assistant took place through six 
regional and national workshops from March to May 2022. The workshops targeted SME stakeholders as important intermediaries to national and regional SME networks, with the aim of training them on the tools to enable them in turn promote it to SMEs in their respective networks. The workshops consisted of a step-by-step explanation of the self-assessment process, guidance to understanding and implementing the customized recommendations, Q&A and in-depth experience sharing.
As GIP continues to shape the I-GO initiative’s overarching objective to provide an up-to-date support structure that brings together the most relevant resource efficiency knowledge and support services, the launch of the I-GO Assistant marked the beginning of promoting this practical tool among the key groups of SMEs and SME stakeholders.
Relevant links
Unlocking the potential of collaboration: I-GO Network
During the I-GO Assistant launch workshops, many participants expressed an interest in improving knowledge and experience sharing by coming together with other SME stakeholders as a network. Building on this interest and its own ambition to support engagement with and between SME stakeholders, GIP developed the I-GO Network to help SME stakeholders maximize their effectiveness in practice through participation in an informative and collaborative network.
The I-GO Network is made up of business associations, NGOs, research institutions, government agencies and development organizations, among others. Although still in its infancy, it already enables the transfer of expertise and overall collaboration between SME stakeholders on a national, regional and global level. Any SME stakeholder can become an I-GO Network member if it provides publicly accessible resource efficiency knowledge and support services relevant to SMEs and/or engages with SME networks to actively support SMEs to improve their business operations.
With the number of organizations joining the I-GO Network constantly growing, GIP has developed an online community space for SME stakeholders on the Green Forum. The I-GO Community Space is an online, interactive space where members can exchange information, knowledge and questions on any SME resource efficiency-related topics. As the I-GO initiative and its different components grow in the coming years, this online community space will facilitate ever more open dialogues and close collaboration between SME stakeholders across the globe.
Relevant links
Green Forum I-GO Community Space
Your guide to the I-GO Community Space
Strengthening the I-GO roll-out: Events highlights 2022
The launch of the I-GO Assistant led to more outreach, discussions and technical demonstrations. To catalyse interaction among I-GO Network members who gathered initially during the launch, three subsequent virtual ‘meet & greet’ meetings took place targeting SME stakeholders in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Following up on the growing interest in the use of the I-GO Assistant, a series of virtual national-level training workshops took place in Africa. And to address how to bring about the structural changes in business practices around the topic of resource efficiency, the GIP team hosted an accelerator session at the World Circular Economy Forum 2022.
Meet & greet sessions in Africa and LAC
One of the frequently shared ideas since the national and regional launch of the I-GO Assistant was a call for increased regional collaboration among SME stakeholders. This resulted in two regional meet & greet sessions for Africa and LAC and one national-level one in Brazil. The key value of hosting these sessions lay in the participants – not only the existing I-GO Network members, but also those from the wider SME stakeholder networks in the region – being able to get to know each other in an informal setting and sharing experiences from their SME resource efficiency journeys. Some key recommendations drawn from the sessions included, for example, the potential to develop an SME working group and a related overarching resource efficiency network. GIP aims to apply these recommendations as part of its efforts to further develop the I-GO Network in 2023.
National-level I-GO training workshops in Africa
In close collaboration with the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD) Zimbabwe, Uganda Parliamentary Alliance on Food and Nutrition Security (UPA-FNS), Circular Lagos and UNIDO Investment and Technology Promotion Offices (ITPO) Nigeria, four national-level training workshops were hosted, targeting SMEs in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Nigeria. The workshops consisted of an introduction to the I-GO initiative coupled with a live demonstration of the I-GO Assistant tool. They were followed by a detailed Q&A and experience-sharing session. Feedback was also collected from participants on optimizing the I-GO Assistant to different local contexts and the practical needs of SMEs. Some main takeaways from these SME-focused workshops reiterated the importance of making the business case for resource efficiency, with subsequent provision of financing solutions and technical training, as well as providing assistance in accessing new markets that recognize resource efficiency investments.
World Circular Economy Forum accelerator session
Building on the learnings accumulated from the series of workshops and meetings in 2022, GIP wrapped up the year in December with a ‘forward-looking’ accelerator session at the World Circular Economy Forum 2022. This side event brought together all the experience gained through the I-GO initiative to date to demonstrate the importance “ground-level” efforts have in developing a strong foundation 
for national and regional circular economies. A key objective of the session was to shed light on how locally-led solutions often were the key to upscaling resource-efficiency practices in businesses, in conjunction with corporate supply chain initiatives. At the heart of the ensuing discussion were the National Cleaner Production Centres (NCPCs), which have achieved varying progress in different countries based on a variety of factors. The session unpacked the current state of play of NCPCs in building a viable approach to expanding resource-efficient businesses and how to best support existing NCPCs to lead a more effective country-wide approach on business circularity, as well as countries without an NCPC or a similar organization to set one up. The discussion was led by panelists representing the European Commission, NCPC South Africa, RECP Centre Ukraine and the Abuja Chamber of Commerce in Nigeria.
The session concluded with a number of key next steps, which included continuing regional exchanges to improve experience sharing through the I-GO Network, working with partner organizations such as GO4SDGS and the United Nations Industrial development Organization (UNIDO) to provide targeted information to national financial institutions to help reduce the ‘risk perception’ of circularity investments, and helping to strengthen links between NCPCs and government initiatives and business associations through relevant existing in-country development projects.
Relevant links
WCEF Accelerator Session – recording
WCEF Accelerator Sessions – post-event summary report
Looking forward to 2023 with I-GO
GIP aims to bring new tools and an even wider array of engagement opportunities, best practice knowledge and events to SMEs, the I-GO Network and global community of SME stakeholders. Below is a taste of what is currently planned for 2023:
I-GO Initiative
- GIP aims to develop the I-GO Implementation Manager, a new tool to accompany SMEs throughout the complete process of implementing and monitoring resource efficiency projects. It will aim to provide easy to use online feasibility evaluations, benchmarking and performance monitoring for any type of resource efficiency action.
- More regional I-GO collaboration workshops will be held, focusing on the original I-GO regions of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Eastern Europe, the Caucuses and Central Asia regions
- I-GO will branch out to other new regions to deliver I-GO training workshops in Q1 to business associations from Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific and Caribbean, as well as I-GO introduction workshops in Asia.
I-GO Network
- The I-GO Network will continue to grow its membership, welcoming new SME stakeholders from around the world. Click here if interested in joining.
- The I-GO Community Space on the Green Forum will continue to host informative discussions on SME resource efficiency and its role in supporting overarching circular economy efforts.
SME resource efficiency training
- GIP will convene a working group of SME stakeholders to provide practical input to global efforts on developing coordinated resource efficiency training solutions for SMEs.
Corporate supply chain initiatives
- Building upon the success of the UNIDO Industry Working Group (IWG), GIP will develop a working group in Q1 that will focus on corporate engagement to accelerate circularity in supply chains.