Circular Opportunity Innovation Launchpad (COIL) started as a circular-economy initiative in the Smart Cities Office at City of Guelph. It grew out of the business focus area of Our Food Future. Beginning their work in the food and environment sectors, the team quickly determined that there was both a significant need – and enthusiastic desire – to embed circularity principles, approaches and practices across for-profit businesses and not-for-profit organizations.

COIL was officially announced in spring 2021, and development began on its first programs that were launched in late summer of the same year.

The initiative began as an innovation platform and network aimed at developing, proving and scaling transformative solutions to shift Canada toward a more prosperous, low-carbon and circular economy (CE). COIL contained a comprehensive set of programs, tools and resources developed to support their goal to broaden and accelerate circularity through enterprises, as well as across supply chains and material streams. Some of COIL’s programming included an accelerator, system-change challenge series, upcycling support, incubator, CE-education curriculum and material flow analyses.