Sabine Oberhuber is an expert on economics, sustainability, climate and environment, innovation & circular economy.

Sabine Rau-Oberhuber is one of the first pioneers of the circular economy and co-founder of Turntoo, a Dutch service company focused on achieving a circular economy. She has developed some of the first business models and strategies for the circular economy and has helped shape thinking about the transition to a circular economy.
Turntoo works with manufacturers and advises clients to promote new processes and methods to reduce or eliminate material waste. The company also assists municipalities with circular city strategies and area development.

Sabine Oberhuber studied economics at Freie Wilhelms University in Münster and earned her Master of Management at ESCP European Business School in Paris, Oxford and Berlin.

Sabine Oberhuber Lecture Topics

• Circular Economy: The Architecture of a New Economic System
• The Material Passport – From Product to Service
• Material Matters: How we can stop wasting resources
• Re-Thinking is required: Service instead of ownership
• Change of perspective – From sustainability to survivability

“Material Matters” by Sabine Oberhuber and Thomas Rau

Together with her husband, internationally recognized architect and sustainability pioneer Thomas Rau, Rau-Oberhuber co-authored the book Material Matters, which analyzes and critiques our current linear systems of production, consumption and waste, and proposes a new economic paradigm that radically changes the status quo. One of the ideas proposed in the book is that buildings should be equipped with a “raw material passport” and material rights so that they do not end up in landfills, but remain in a continuous cycle of use.

Lectures Sabine Oberhuber

Sabine Oberhuber is a guest lecturer at various universities and is an internationally sought-after speaker. She speaks at public conferences and congresses, but also at internal events of companies, ministries and NGOs.

Turntoo

Turntoo was founded in 2010 as an architectural firm dedicated to designing the architecture of a new economic system. Turntoo cooperates with numerous organizations, in the development and realization of circular models and tools.

With a team of specialists, Turntoo accompanies organizations at home and abroad in the development and implementation of circular business models and strategies that guarantee the preservation of raw materials. For example, Turntoo specialists accompanied producers in the development of circular products and business models, designed a circular purchasing strategy for the Dutch government or accompanied municipalities in the development of frameworks for circular territorial development.

Together with Thomas Rau and the Turntoo Team, she developed the first pioneering circular economy model projects and implemented them in collaboration with leading companies. For example, in collaboration with Philips, the business model of light as a service was created, in which the customer is no longer the owner, but the user, and waste is a thing of the past. Together with Bosch (2012), Turntoo has developed a program whereby social housing tenants can purchase the power of an energy-saving refrigerator or washing machine on a service basis. Through the product as a service model, the producer remains responsible for the entire product cycle, which leads to a large savings potential in the field of energy and materials, and ultimately avoids waste and secures materials for the future.

Sabine Oberhuber on the subject of sustainability

Who owns the material? And how can we ensure that material is used and at the same time preserved for future generations? Material preservation for the future means that from the mine to the consumer, all agreements must be based on the principle: material use instead of material consumption. This means that ownership of material can be organized in terms of a generational contract and thus become a service.