Estonian leather goods maker Stella Soomlais has come up with an innovative bag design that enables old or damaged leather bags to be turned into new leather goods, with little leftover material.
Estonian company Gelatex Technologies has designed a new textile made of gelatine - a substance derived from livestock industry waste. Compared to other materials, this innovative textile is the closest thing to leather. The product is easily scalable, quick to produce and environmentally-friendly.
By identifiying good practices in turning biomass to heat or power, the uP_running project is unlocking the strong potential of woody biomass residues produced by Agrarian Pruning and Plantation Removals.
CuanTec is a Scottish blue biotech company that replaces plastic with natural alternatives. Sourced from waters of the Atlantic, CuanTec takes waste from fisheries and obtains the natural biopolymer chitin. Their process uses biology rather than chemistry to create chitin and chitosan of high quality and purity, which are in demand for over 3,000 industrial uses around the world.
Estonian business Rohepakend has come up with a home-grown alternative to plastic food packaging: a food wrap made from donated cloth, pine resin from Estonian forests and beeswax.
To prevent consumers from buying items they use only a few times a year, Usitoo enables customers to rent these instead. The cooperative has a catalogue of hundreds of items that its customers can rent with credit, thus making the possession span of these items much longer.
ISATIÓ is a Brussels SME that recovers samples from the textiles industry to create unique designer clothing, with manufacturing all done locally and the supply chain covered entirely by bicycle couriers.
The most used resources in the building sector, such as sand and metals, are non-renewable resources. Extracted, transported and processed in ever-increasing quantities, at ever-higher energy costs and with consequences which are far from negligible for the environment, their use does not fit with a sustainable logic. Thinking in terms of circular economy prompts us to take another look at these linear and consuming models, at both the level of materials for building, energy, land, and that of waste management.
This book will help you discovering a large number of experiments and actions which can be reproduced on your level of action. Their generalisation to the whole France is currently a priority if we want to lead the ecological transition of our society. Nevertheless, circular economy is not something which can be decreed, and each territory wishing to invest in it has to reinvent its own process to adapt and implement the concept to its own specificities.
The central theme of this report is how to greatly enhance resource efficiency. The proposition is that a circular economy, where products are designed for ease of recycling, reuse, disassembly and remanufacturing should replace the traditional, linear ’take, make & dispose’ model that has dominated the economy so far. Most studies so far on the circular economy focus primarily on the business case for enhanced resource efficiency. This report rather focuses on the social benefits that a transformation from a linear to a circular economy would entail. In this report the focus is on Poland and the Czech Republic.
The central theme of this report is how to greatly enhance resource efficiency. The proposition is that a circular economy, where products are designed for ease of recycling, reuse, disassembly and remanufacturing should replace the traditional, linear ’take, make & dispose’ model that has dominated the economy so far. This, no doubt, is a major prerequisite to stay within the Planetary Boundaries.
The report identifies ten attractive circular innovation and investment priorities for Europe until 2025, totalling €320 billion. Despite the favourable financial context, investment in circular economy opportunities is still generally too low. The Foundation's previous research Growth Within outlined a long-term circular economy vision for Europe; this new report identifies the most important investment opportunities along with the policy reforms and business actions needed to unlock them. The report focuses on the mobility, food and built environment value chains, which together represent 60% of consumer expenditure and 80% of resource use.
In a circular economy, growth comes from ‘within’, by increasing the value derived from existing economic structures, products and materials. This major report quantifies the benefits for Europe – in terms of growth, household income, and environmental outcomes – of adopting a circular development path compared with our current linear one. Incorporating in-depth analysis of three of Europe’s largest basic needs, mobility, food and the built environment, the report provides a vision of how the circular economy could look, and highlights wide-ranging implications for government and business leaders.
The report describes the concept of the circular economy and outlines its key characteristics. It draws attention to both the benefits and challenges in transitioning to such an economy and highlights possible ways to measure progress.
The report explores the circular economy from a product perspective, applying a systemic approach and transition theory. Drivers of product design and usage are discussed in the context of emerging consumption trends and business models. For governance to be effective, it has to address the product life-cycle and the societal context determining it. Indicators and assessment tools are proposed that can help fill the current data and knowledge gaps.
The Circular Phone report provides practical answers to common financing pitfalls for circular businesses, using Fairphone as the real-life example.
So far, businesses striving to implement “Product-as-a-Service” models have had the challenge of reconciling the need to find financing parties with the complexities of their own business model.
To achieve a financeable model for the Circular Fairphone Service, the Community of Practice created a blueprint for Fairphone’s business model. Through the creation of a legal template – a 1st Circular Service Contract - and a financial cash flow tool, the group has proven that the gap between the businesses and financiers can be bridged.
A breakfast briefing will be held on 5 March (9-10 a.m. CET) to launch the Think2030 paper ‘A low-carbon and circular industry for Europe’, co-written by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP).
On 19 March, OVAM, EEB, UNEP partners and ECESP organised a webinar on trade, resource extraction and circular economy. The event brought together the trade and circular economy communities to:
increase awareness of the issues identified in the UNEP-IRP’s report
to feed the upcoming discussion on the EU’s trade policy review and the WTO’s future.
The anti-waste law for a circular economy, promulgated on 10 February 2020, includes new requirements which seek to steer public procurement towards recycled raw materials. To help public purchasers in Île-de-France, GIP Maximilien will be launching a new initiative on Thursday 11 March at 9 a.m., focusing on guiding public purchasers towards more circular public procurement.
This webinar, on Thursday 25 February from 9 to 10.30 a.m. EST, is a pre-event of the World Circular Economy Forum + Climate (WCEF+Climate), co-hosted by the EU Delegation and the Permanent Missions of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Singapore, Kenya and Finland. It aims to discuss the potential of the circular economy as an essential tool in a comprehensive climate policy.
LOOPS is a webinar series which aims to shine a spotlight on innovation in the circular economy. The episode on 3 March will consist of a live conversation with leaders of the two Horizon2020-funded projects HOUSEFUL and WOOL2LOOP, which seek to identify innovative solutions in the construction industry.
Over the last 2 and a half years, CICERONE has worked closely with over 100 stakeholders, primarily programme owners, to build more alignment for circular economy programming and funding in Europe. The event on 30 March is an excellent opportunity to hear the partners present some of the project's results and experience first-hand the launch of the new EU Circular Cooperation Hub.
The Global Alliance on Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency brings together governments and relevant networks and organisations to provide a global impetus for initiatives related to the circular economy transition, resource efficiency and sustainable consumption and production, building on efforts being deployed internationally. Join the official launch on Monday 22 Feb - 12:00-13:15 CET.