Marypup's upcycled rainwear
Marypup recovers thousands of tents which have been thrown away and uses the fabric to make rainwear. This is upcycling: the waste is recovered, transformed and given a new life.
Marypup recovers thousands of tents which have been thrown away and uses the fabric to make rainwear. This is upcycling: the waste is recovered, transformed and given a new life.
Convert works to support UN Sustainable Development Goal 12: ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns. It explores how natural sustainable resources can be used to make new products and seeks to reduce the amount of waste on earth through recycling and upcycling. Every fibre matters when waste fibres are used as non-woven material.
This COSME project aims to implement a capacity building and support scheme for SMEs in the tourism sector that will lead them to reach different levels of Circular Economy innovations within a transition system.
There are not many eco-friendly products on the Romanian construction market, so there was definitely a niche in the thermal insulation market. LanaTerm uses sheep's wool to create thermal insulation for buildings.
Baterkaren's mission is to make sustainability (circular economy principles and associated environmental protection) accessible to the general public, in order to render communities capable to adapt as effectively as possible to the potential impacts of climate change in the area.
At the Fabric Sales, a new model has been developed for repurposing and extending the life of designer fabrics.
Together with the students for furniture design of VOMO the CiLAB collective started a journey creating new circular concepts based on textile and furniture waste. The concepts do not only facilitate awareness but also link with the local community and the city of Mechelen.
The Sheltersuit Foundation has three goals: helping people in need, closing the gap in the labour market and reducing waste. It produces wind- and waterproof coats that can be transformed into a sleeping bag, and are distributed free of charge to homeless people and people in refugee camps.
The European REFUCOAT project developed innovative, efficient, bioplastic food packaging production processes using renewable, recyclable materials which could replace conventional fossil fuel-based raw materials. Three different bio-based active packaging systems were developed.
Titan Greece - a cement and building material producer - plays an active role in the implementation of a circular economy model at various stages of the production process.
The Plastic Atlas contains more than 49 detailed infographics covering a broad range of topics regarding the plastic pollution crisis looking along the entire value chain of plastic. The atlas highlights the scale of the crisis, and the global impacts of plastic production, consumption and disposal on other key global challenges such as human health and climate change. It also outlines the role of plastic for key industrial sectors such as agriculture and tourism and describes the corporate interests and drivers behind the plastic crisis. Finally, the Plastic Atlas presents an overview of key plastic-free regulations, zero waste solutions and a snapshot of the growing global movement working towards a future free from plastic pollution.
The previous Commission policy on resources management was part of the priority for jobs and growth and economic competitiveness. The circular economy will be no less important for the new political priority of climate neutrality; it will become one of the indispensable elements for meeting the EU’s ambitions.
EU climate policy and the circular economy are, by and large, complementary and mutually reinforcing. The circular economy is more than just another ‘product standards’ policy.
Circular economy products for the foreseeable future will require both technology push and market pull policies. The principal challenge will be to create ‘lead markets’ for the circular economy in combination with low-carbon products.
Textiles are fundamental to our society and employs millions of people worldwide, making it among the largest in the world and an important part of Europe's manufacturing industry. However, textile production and consumption cause significant environmental, climate and social impacts by using resources, water, land and chemicals and emitting greenhouse gases and pollutants.
In Europe, the sector employs 1.7 million people and Europeans consume on average 26 kg of textiles per person per year. This briefing by the European Environment Agency provides an EU perspective of the environmental and climate pressures from textile production and consumption, and discusses how circular business models and regulation can help move us towards a circular textiles economy.
This report by the EEA highlights that fostering circular material use requires a broad system perspective and extensive stakeholder involvement. The entire product lifecycle — including the design, production, consumption and waste phases — needs to be addressed in a coherent way. The enablers of and barriers to circular business models need to be well understood and addressed before innovation and competitiveness can be enhanced.
This policy paper by the Institute for European Environmental Policy examines the interface between the EU circular economy, trade and sustainable development. It identifies the expected global impacts associated with the EU’s shift to circularity and investigates the role of trade in either incentivising or hindering this process.
Finally, the paper highlights the links between the circular economy, trade and sustainable development, emphasising the need for better policy coherence among these areas in the EU.
This guide presents how dredged sediments can be beneficially used in road engineering with a view to sustainable development and to the protection of the environment and of populations.
This is the result of research carried out by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (DGCE) at the School of Mines of Douai for more than ten years on the theme of using dredged sediments. It is coherent with French regulations and the methodological framework (ADEME, 2010; SETRA, 2011) that prevailed at the time of the work.
This guide is not intended for use of sediments abstracted from a river system. It is only intended for harbour and canal dredgings, where restitution to river systems is usually not possible -at least economically.
The Fibersort project aims at realising the widespread implementation of the automated sorting technology by validating it as a key value adding innovation to enable textile-to-textile recycling.
While the challenges and opportunities of used textiles are increasingly in the spotlight of governments, industry, and civil society, considerable system changes are required to transition towards a circular economy for textiles. Throughout this report, policy recommendations are formulated showing the legislative, economic and soft instruments that regional, national and the European governments have at their disposal to create an enabling environment for textiles collection, sorting and recycling at scale.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the UN Environment Programme have published the first annual New Plastics Economy Global Commitment progress report. Presented at the Our Ocean Conference in Oslo, the report provides an unprecedented level of transparency on how almost 200 businesses and governments are reshaping the plastics system.
Launched in 2018, the Global Commitment now includes over 400 signatories, which are aligned on a path to build a new plastics economy. Business signatories, including companies representing 20% of all plastic packaging produced globally, are working to eliminate the plastic we don't need, to innovate so that all plastic we do need is 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable, and to circulate all the plastic we use.
Find out more here.
Mobile phones, particularly smartphones, have undergone a period of rapid growth to become virtually indispensable to today's lifestyle. Yet their production, use and disposal can entail a significant environmental burden.
This study, commissioned by the European Economic and Social Committee and carried out by the Centre for European Policy Studies, looks at the opportunities and challenges arising from implementing circular economy approaches in the mobile phone value chain. A review of the value chain and different circular approaches is complemented by a scenario analysis that aims to quantify the potential impacts of circular approaches such as recycling, refurbishment and lifetime extension.
The study finds that there is a large untapped potential for recovering materials from both the annual flow of new mobile phones sold in Europe once they reach the end of their life and the accumulated stock of unused, so-called "hibernating" devices in EU households. Achieving high recycling rates for these devices can offer opportunities to reduce EU dependence on imported materials and make secondary raw materials available on the EU market, as shown in the picture below.
Drawing on the empirical findings and the analysis conducted, this study recommends policy action in the following areas:
As such, policy-makers should close the collection gap for mobile phone devices, which could in turn create jobs in the refurbishment sector. Extending the lifetime of mobile phones can also provide CO2 mitigation benefits, particularly from displacing the production of new devices.
Over the past couple of years, as companies start to understand the opportunities that lie under the concept of circular economy, the circularity conversation has gained significant momentum. At the same time, national and regional governments are developing frameworks and regulations to promote the circular economy.
Effective policymaking is crucial to accelerate and scale up circular actions in the economy. It supports businesses in overcoming hurdles by stimulating innovative projects and long-term investments in circularity, facilitating collaboration and partnerships, and producing tangible results.
Learning from successful policies can help inform future policies to promote wider actions in other sectors and regions over time.
The Circular Learning Hub's public workshop on project outcomes and knowledge sharing will take place on 18 December 2020.
The EU SME Centre, the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in Beijing and the Danish Chamber of Commerce in China are pleased to invite you to an online workshop on green and circular economy in China. The online workshop will take place on 15 December 2020 on Zoom from 15:30 – 18:30 (Beijing time). (Europe time is -7 hours).
EuroCommerce invites you to a webinar with Virginijus Sinkevičius on 22 January 2021 from 14.00 to 15.00 (CET).
The first European Circular Cities Declaration webinar will present examples of good practice from the group of over 30 signatories. It will also provide an introduction to the Declaration for cities and regions which may be interested in signing.
As part of its work on the Environmental Footprint, the European Commission is organising a webinar for SMEs on 10 December. This webinar will provide an introduction to the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method, answering questions such as: What is a PEF study? How can such a study be undertaken? What are the benefits for SMEs?
The 3rd ICESP annual conference on 11 December 2020, organised together with ENEA, presents the priorities for a post-COVID-19 recovery, based on the circular economy as a lever for effective actions in a resilient process and a recovery perspective.
The #EUCircularTalks are a new concept for exchange. They aim to encourage stakeholders to interact and discuss the circular economy topics on the Platform.
This workshop aims to discuss the opportunities of circular economy and its possible blindspots, and to explore how best to promote the proliferation of business models in the EU that are both circular and fair.
In this webinar on 4 December, Tondo and Circularise will discuss the potential of blockchain technology to support the transition to the circular economy.
How can digitalisation boost sustainability? How can we create opportunities for European SMEs and move towards more fairness and sustainability in the digital economy? How can digitalisation empower citizens and local communities, and assist consumers at making more sustainable choices?
The answer to these and many more questions raised at this conference on 25 November is: Go circular!
LAC Days - Webinar: Circular Economy in the Covid-19 era: Challenges and Opportunities will present expertise from Brazil, Chile and Slovenia on circular economy, as well as views and experience of regional and multilateral bodies (EC, UNEP, IRP).
WCEF2019 presented the most advanced circular solutions for governments, industries, businesses and citizens and put a strong emphasis on the next level of circularity and how to scale up the transition.
CICERONE has launched an online consultation aimed at circular economy programme owners (organisations that design and fund programmes), as well as CICERONE partner organisations. The consultation is open until 18th July 2019.
The fourth edition of the international Circular Change Conference took place in Maribor, Slovenia, on 16 and 17 May 2019.
In the face of a growing global waste crisis, new corporate reporting disclosures are being developed by Global reporting Initiative (GRI) to help organizations better understand and communicate their waste impacts. It is in this context that the GRI Waste Standard is under development, and open to public consultation and comment until 15 July 2019.
A 600.000 EUR funding programme to support innovators in Ireland to develop and demonstrate consumer and business solutions that will stimulate the circular economy is now open for applications.
Waste and pollution from the production of textiles and clothing have become critical global issues. The current ‘linear’ model is outdated and unsustainable. There is an urgent need for a strategy to transform industry into a circular model. A new report launched by Ecopreneur.eu, the European Sustainable Business Federation, calls for decisive policy measures to create an enabling framework.
On March 27, the European Parliament voted to adopt the Single-Use Plastics Directive, thus banning single-use plastic cutlery, cotton buds, straws and stirrers to be banned by 2021, setting a 90% collection target for plastic bottles by 2029 and introducing more stringent application of the “polluter pays” principle.
On March 19, GLOBE EU and the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) organised a conference to look back on what the 2014 - 2019 EU mandate has achieved for the circular economy and present GLOBE EU’s recommendations with priorities for the next European Commission.
Applications for the Procura+ Awards, a major and prestigious recognition of sustainable and innovative procurement, are now open!