EME scales the circular economy with Agentforce

Excess Materials Exchange (EME) provides an AI-powered platform that brokers surplus materials, helping organizations cut costs and meet sustainability goals. Working with infrastructure owners, construction portfolios, manufacturers, transport leaders, and the public sector to manage surplus at scale across Europe, EME also plays a key role in an EU-funded program defining the future of circular airports.

Struggling to scale the circular economy as every transaction requires a human touch.

The circular economy is an effective way to reduce environmental impact, but it can be complex. EME operates in a highly regulated environment, with different waste laws and compliance requirements in every country. Every material brokered through the platform must have an EU-compliant Digital Product Passport, a detailed digital record that tracks a material across its entire lifecycle. 

While EME already used AI to generate passports and run risk assessments, users still had to enter a lot of information, and onboarding, support, and transaction management were largely manual. This made smaller-value material streams uneconomical with a lean core team and meant limited access for organizations that lack the time, tools, or expertise to manage circular processes on their own. 

Construction companies often over-purchase materials by 13%. While large enterprises could use EME to resell this excess, smaller building firms lack the time and expertise to manage the paperwork. To truly scale its impact, EME needed to move from a high-touch service model to a self-service platform that anyone could use. The solution wasn’t increased operations, but instead agents that execute repeatable workflows with auditable guardrails, with the team stepping in for compliance and logistics once a deal is ready.

Scaling up with Agentforce to manage 2,000+ material matches a month.

After attending Dreamforce 2024, EME recognized Agentforce was a game-changer. Working with Salesforce Launchpad, the team combined AI, marketplace thinking, and environmental impact to move closer to its original vision: a scalable, self-service circular economy platform where drastically lower transaction costs make smaller-value materials economical.

Today, EME makes around 2,000 material matches a month, with up to 10,000 digital product passports live on the platform at any time. Agentforce gives EME the foundation to scale that volume without massively increasing its manual effort.

The project runs in three phases:

• Phase 1: Establish an AI agent with Agentforce that helps users understand the circular economy, learn the platform, and enter data correctly.
• Phase 2: Use Agentforce to create an AI agent that lets users interact directly with Digital Product Passport data, turning each passport into a searchable knowledge base and decision-support layer.
• Phase 3: Use Agentforce to match materials with new use cases by connecting passport data with leads and customers in Sales Cloud, enabling proactive, targeted outreach.

EME has completed phase one and is currently working on phases two and three in parallel.

Making the circular economy easier to use within weeks.

The circular economy can feel complex, especially when users must enter detailed data to meet strict regulations. With Agentforce, they can ask questions about the circular economy, how the platform works, and how to complete specific fields. 

EME started with 35+ focused knowledge files and continues to expand the library, while putting guardrails in place. This trusted content is used to train the AI agent so it can respond accurately to users’ queries. The team carefully defines what information the agent can share and when to escalate to a human. Over time, EME learned that purpose-built resources work better than repurposed whitepapers to avoid conflicting data, improving both accuracy and the user experience. It took just weeks to set up, train, and go live with the assistance agent.

Doubling profit margins and extending reach with AI-powered self-service and automation.

Many organizations see Digital Product Passports as admin overheads, but EME is helping change that mindset. 

“We’re using Agentforce to turn Digital Product Passport data into a strategic advantage by allowing users to actively query and explore information on their surplus materials,” said van Maaren.

This is particularly helpful for global organizations using the platform to exchange materials internally between different departments and geographies. These customers can now ask questions such as: “How much steel do we have across Europe?” and get instant answers. This visibility can change how organizations manage surplus materials and increase opportunities for reuse and recycling. 

EME has achieved this capability by centralizing passport and customer data in Sales Cloud. Each digital passport becomes a knowledge base that users and potential buyers can interact with directly on a 24x7 basis. This significantly boosts efficiency for EME’s small core team and increases gross margins per transaction from 40–50% to 75–90%. These lower overheads make smaller transactions more viable, opening the platform to SMEs and expanding the circular economy’s reach.

Proactively matching materials with new uses in Sales Cloud.

Agentforce also helps EME find the best next use for materials automatically. Once a digital passport is complete and published, Agentforce segments the market using Sales Cloud data, and proactively reaches out to the most relevant customers.

Every interaction flows back into Agentforce Sales, enriching the data so outreach can be more targeted next time. Using Sales Cloud, EME can manage its customer data more easily, tracking every interaction and using this to inform future conversations - whether with an EME employee or AI agent.

Higher margins, lower CO₂.

Early case studies show that EME’s platform doesn’t just reduce waste, but also delivers financial value, with users saving €100–€1,000 per ton of Scope 3 CO₂ avoided.

For example, using EME’s platform, one airport contractor reused 350 items, saving $50,000 and 30 tons of CO₂ over the course of a single refurbishment project. Using Agentforce, EME makes it easier to repeat these benefits at scale. With airports typically running 100-200 similar projects every year, scaling this approach across operations will unlock millions in savings while massively reducing carbon.

With Agentforce, EME can help more organizations reuse more materials, faster, and with far less effort.

Agentforce allows EME to automate highly complex processes without the need for expensive custom software or massive operational teams. It empowers a small team to deliver enterprise-grade impact, cut costs, support more customers, and help the world build a more sustainable future.

The Results 

• 2,000+ material matches per month
• 10,000 live digital passports
• 75-90% gross margin per transaction, up from 40-50%