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.
In France, the designer Lucile Viaud found her way to contribute to organic recycling. More precisely, to recycling of seafood waste. Her work is focused on transforming oyster shells into glass.
SirPlus, based in Germany, is an example of a business which avoids food waste to its utmost. It consists of a supermarket that sells food rejected by other stores for being considered out of the regular aesthetics for a supermarket – for instance, ugly fruit and vegetables, jars labelled incorrectly, or goods near or past expiry date.
RAU has been working in the architectural sector focusing on the design of sustainable buildings. Their projects include buildings for public/private sectors, with an integrated design methodology.
CIAK is a waste management company from Croatia that focuses on recovering hazardous and non-hazardous waste. Focusing on recovering and recycling accumulators and batteries, CIAK helps closing the loop for these products.
RecycLivre.com is a website selling second-hand books which aims to establish a relationship based on solidarity between its customers and underprivileged groups. It is built around the idea of promoting the recirculation of books instead of them being thrown away by their owners.
Tropa Verde was set up in Santiago de Compostela, Spain in 2015, and seeks to encourage environmentally responsible behaviour. Its goal is to promote recycling by rewarding environmentally-friendly practices.
Filippa K is a Swedish fashion brand which has taken significant steps to support sustainable consumption and design. The brand follows the "four Rs" of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair in order to encourage more mindful consumption and diminish fashion's impact on the environment.
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.
This workshop on 20 October 2020 will look at how cities and regions have invested in a circular economic system and how this has made them more resilient during the Covid-19 crisis.
As part of Circular Week 2020, this meeting will highlight how Finland is building a circular economy system and how important a holistic approach to this concept is. We will learn about the latest circular packaging materials presented by representatives of Finnish companies. In the end, a matchmaking session will be held for interested business representatives.
In this series of webinars, We are Circular will present best circular practices and organisations from all over the world in order to distill success formula, investigate business models and meet people behind the concept.
In the EU, waste water and solid waste are separately managed. Syctom and SIAAP, through their project COMETHA, aim to demonstrate the available synergies in institutional and technical cooperation regarding the circular economy principles for carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus, and the optimisation of renewable energy production. Target: a future with “zero non-recovered sludge and solid waste".
The Benelux Builds Circular Webinar on 10 September is a policy discussion on circular construction from a national, Benelux and EU standpoint.
This transnational event will explore why circular economy approaches are beneficial for the environment and society, and show the financial benefits for the organisations that buy furniture this way.
The CircLean Open Day Event, which will be held in virtual format on 10 September, 2-3.30 pm CET, is an opportunity to learn and discuss about the CircLean network, monitoring and reporting approach, tool and label.
On 8 September 2020 the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) and the European Commission (EC) will hold the 16th meeting (online) of the Technical Platform for Cooperation on the Environment, dedicated to "How can local and regional authorities use the circular economy as an enabler of a sustainable recovery?"
Les Assises de l’économie circulaire reviennent les 7 et 8 septembre 2020 avec un événement inédit - web et 100% gratuit - pour aborder des sujets de fond, concrets, au bénéfice et à la portée de tous et de chacun.
100 eco-innovative solutions supporting the transition towards CE, an unprecedented detailed mapping of waste flows and wastescapes, a multi-dimensional and multiscalar LCA based sustainable assessment and a transdisciplinary knowledge generation methodology, all developed within innovative co-creational peri-urban living labs (PULL) and an online geodesign decision support environment (GDSE).
ACR+, the Association of Cities and Regions for Sustainable Resource Management, celebrated its 25th anniversary in June 2019. At this event, member organisations presented their respective work on the circular economy and committed to continue furthering the circular transition.
At the 14thBled Strategic Forum, Ladeja Godina Kosir, Chair of the ECESP Coordination Group, will be moderating panels on sustainability policy and circular economy.
The CSCP, Sitra and DBU have set up the Consumer Insight Action Panel, a new European multi-stakeholder initiative designed to support the transition to the circular economy by generating, applying and testing consumer behavioural insights in circular strategies for textiles, plastics and electronics. How might we innovate to enable people to reuse, repair, share or recycle? Find out with us!
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s DIF welcomes contributors from across the globe for its November 2019 sessions to share their ideas, stories and innovations to spark conversations with a worldwide audience.
During its Presidency of the Council of the European Union in late 2019, Finland will highlight the EU’s role in leading the transition to a climate neutral Europe with a versatile selection of Finnish artists’ work and a number of exhibitions that will give the public a new view on sustainable development and the circular economy.
The EU’s largest National Promotional Banks and Institutions and the European Investment Bank launch a EUR 10 billion initiative to accelerate the transition to a sustainable and circular economy
Citeo Circular Challenge is a programme to detect innovation, essentially in the paper and packaging sectors, which has supported over 700 projects across the entire circular value chain in 2016. Submit your project until 15 September 2019, and win up to €40,000 in grant funding and business services.
In the context of European Commission’s Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) pilot programme, ADEME (Agence de l’environnement et de la maîtrise de l’énergie) supports innovation projects that include an ETV performance verification step.
To help stakeholders and citizens understand the circular economy, Didier Bourguignon from the European Parliamentary Research Service answers three key questions on circular economy.
The Urban Agenda Partnership on Circular Economy has identified several barriers and bottlenecks regarding the use of secondary raw materials (recycling) or products (re-use) originating from waste streams and has now commissioned a basic assessment of the current legislative framework, the implementation and application of that framework, and the definitions of waste in the context of a circular economy.
Are you an urban waste manager or regulator? Share your experiences and best practice to provide valuable feedback on implementing waste legislation and contribute to recommendations seeking to improve this framework.
