As part of the Circular Public Procurement project, the City of Aalborg (Denmark) has established a new innovative approach to buying playgrounds, based on the principles of a circular economy, as well as grounded in a pedagogical understanding of creative play as an important part of a child’s development.
The Woody Group, a company which manufactures pyjamas, wants to use raw materials more efficiently and responsibly in the future. It also wants to take more responsibility for its products once they are put on the market.
The Facility Services Agency drew up an inventory of all the surplus office furniture from the various departments of the Flemish government. This made it much easier to give the chairs, desks and cupboards etc. a second 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.
Baterkáreň'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.
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 report from TCO Development, the organization behind the global sustainability certification for IT products TCO Certified, explains how everyone who buys/uses IT products can implement circular practices. It sets out how circular economy (CE) helps solve many pressing sustainability challenges linked to IT products and contains 33 expert tips on circular IT management.
Key findings:
Use IT products longer.
Circularity helps maximize the value of IT investment.
Market demand is key to accelerating the pace of change.
Circularity includes IT management throughout the life cycle.
Improved supply chain responsibility can speed up transition to CE.
Circularity is a team effort.
Many circular solutions are already in place - just use them.
The European Policy Centre’s (EPC) Task Force called Digital Roadmap to Circular Economy has explored the linkages between digitalisation and circular economy, the opportunities created by data and digitally-enabled solutions, and the challenges associated with harnessing their full potential for the transition to a circular economy.
The project represents a pioneering endeavour in exploring the interconnections between the digital and green transformations and considers the implications for EU policymaking.
The final publication The circular economy: Going digital and its executive summary show that digitalisation can offer enormous possibilities for the transition to a more sustainable, circular economy but it is essential to steer it in the right direction.
The Circular Economy Action Group, the business initiative promoted by Forética in Spain to lead the transition of companies towards a circular economy model, has produced a report entitled "The reality of plastics: myths and truths" [La realidad de los plásticos: Mitos y verdades].
The aim of the report is to ensure a better understanding of plastic waste pollution, thus promoting the foundations of the new plastics economy. It also outlines the actions to be taken in order to improve plastic circularity.
Forética's mission is to promote the integration of social, environmental and good governance aspects in the strategy and management of companies and organisations with one objective: to achieve a sustainable future.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA) has always been a meeting place for Sweden’s future. It builds bridges between the business community, the public sector, academia and the political sphere.
Its two-year project "Resource Effectiveness and the Circular Economy" was aimed at making Sweden more competitive in a future with finite resources, in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, by economising on resources and developing new technologies, services and business models in five areas:
Read the synthesis report, marking the completion of the project, which presents the most important conclusions, recommendations and action plans from the five subprojects.
The Dutch economy is 24.5% circular. Measures in four key sectors can triple the national circularity rate and help the government achieve its ambitions for a fully circular economy by 2050.
On 3 June, Circle Economy launched the Circularity Gap Report for the Netherlands. The report shows that the Netherlands is a circular frontrunner: the country's circularity rate is three times higher than the global rate of 8.6%. Consuming 221 million tonnes of materials each year, the Netherlands retrieves one quarter from non-virgin, secondary sources. However, if the government is to achieve its ambitions of full circularity by 2050, a major overhaul of the national economy, including jobs, will still be necessary.
Holland Circular Hotspot is a private-public platform in which companies, knowledge institutes and local authorities collaborate to promote and support international collaboration and knowledge exchange on Dutch circular economy, and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, a government agency for sustainable, agricultural, innovative and international business development and growth, have come together to share insights, networks and resources to help kickstart circular developments that will boost the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Circular examples from various market segments closely linked to SDGs such as agri-food, manufacturing and the built environment are included in the brochure next to cross-sectoral topics such as consumer goods or plastics.
The European Manufacturers of Expanded Polystyrene (EUMEPS) is the voice of the Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) industry. It has published an op-ed welcoming the European Commission’s commitment to a Renovation Wave and the outline of its strategy shared in the roadmap published in May 2020. It believes that this initiative is a great opportunity for scaling-up current renovation rates and EU’s climate and energy efficiency goals.
EUMEPS agrees that increased renovation can be a key contributor to creating jobs and stimulating economic recovery in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It embraces the Commission’s finding that buildings are also critical for making circularity work and its objective to implement the Renovation Wave in line with circular economy principles.
Textiles and clothing play an important role in our everyday life. But the global fashion industry model is unsustainable. It uses large amounts of resources and has negative impacts on the environment and people. The global fashion industry, therefore, has to make a transition towards a circular model. In a ‘circular’ fashion economy, clothes, textiles, and fibres are kept at their highest value during use and re-enter the economy to avoid becoming waste.
This research note produced by Ecopreneur.eu is a first inventory of the potential impacts of future EU circular fashion on non-European textile producing countries. It uses existing literature and input from four circular economy experts to analyse the economic, social and environmental impacts.
Plastics represent a serious waste-handling problem with only 10% of the plastic waste generated worldwide being recycled. Plastics recycling is instrumental to close the loop of the circular economy by re-introducing into the economy high-quality plastic recyclates incorporated into new products.
The brochure highlights the importance of moving towards a circular economy for plastics in Europe. It identifies the most commonly used types of plastics and describes the current state-of-play, challenges faced by the European mechanical plastics recycling industry and key recommendations for overcoming them. Plastics recycling’s environmental benefits and economic importance are also touched upon.
A broad coalition of social and environmental NGOs has developed a Civil Society European Strategy for Sustainable Textiles, Garments, Leather and Footwear, looking at the social, environmental and governance implications of the textile sector in one forward-looking document ahead of the comprehensive EU Strategy for Textiles, expected in 2021.
The document aims to contribute to the upcoming comprehensive EU Strategy for Textiles, by providing recommendations on what such a Strategy should encompass in order to maintain a high level of ambition. It includes forward-looking proposals on due diligence, product policy framework, waste, unfair trading practices, international trade, support to producing countries, alternative business models and a multi-stakeholder platform.
On Thursday 28 April The European Commission invites you to an online event on the methods for measuring the life cycle performance of products and organisations: the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and the Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF).
This webinar on 26 April will show you how to help your value chain reduce its carbon emissions to fight climate change, keep your business competitive, and stay legally compliant.
Join the event on 21 April 2022 for the launch of the Circularity Gap Report Sweden to learn more about the state of circularity in Sweden and how advancing it can help strengthen climate action.
The 4th OECD Roundtable on the Circular Economy in Cities and Regions will bring together key stakeholders from cities, regions, national governments, the private sector, civil society, academia, philanthropy and international organisations on 12 April 2022.
This event on 7 April aims to explore the concept of biofactories and present the technical advances of the projects ECOVAL and WALNUT. The social, legal and market barriers for the valorisation of high added value products for agriculture and industry, such as sludge or biofertilisers obtained from waste flows from urban water treatment plants, will be discussed.
This #EUCircularTalk on Measuring Circularity on 17 May 2022 aims to reach out to and hold an interactive dialogue with stakeholders outside the leadership group. This session will address the link between ISO work on international circular economy standards and circular procurement practices.
The national Norwegian GPP audit will be presented as an example of measuring green public procurement efforts and their impact.
Book launch for "Social and Cultural Aspects of the Circular Economy: Towards Solidarity", edited By Viktor Pál.
During this open and free webinar on 5 April, the book chapter authors will be sharing some of the insights set out in chapter 9 on "Assessing through a gender-inclusion lens the social impact of circular strategies in the apparel value chain: The Dutch case".
At this side event of the UNECE Regional Forum on Sustainable Development, to take place on 6 April at 17:15 CEST, government officials and other stakeholders will discuss how to facilitate coordination between government institutions and share good practices on administrative requirements for policy making in the circular economy context.
After two years of cancellations due to COVID-19, EuRIC is delighted to announce that the European Recycling Conference is back and will take place on 14-15 June 2022 at IFEMA in Madrid.
The 4th conference will offer unique networking opportunities, brief participants on the latest regulatory and business developments and be part of the International Recycling and Recovery Trade Fair in Madrid which attracts over 10 000 visitors and 200 exhibition stands. The event will bring together top-level executives from companies, federation leaders and officials from EU institutions.
This interactive webinar with experts, organised by HiCircular, will take participants through essential steps in the transition towards a more circular way of doing business.
Following the publication of the new Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) by the European Commission in early March, the members of the Coordination Group of the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform have issued a joint statement on the CEAP, while also reflecting on the coronavirus pandemic ravaging the world.
The French "Institut National de l'Economie Circulaire" (INEC) and Orée have published a co-authored study to better understand circular economy initiatives dynamics at work in different countries.
At times of Covid-19 quarantine, Belgian startup ASmartWorld who reconditions second-hand smartphones, took the initiative to distribute them free of charge in old people's homes to help guests reconnect with their families.
Check out the Circular Conversation - A Circular Bridge for Europe - with Ladeja Godina Košir, Chair of the Coordination Group of the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform (ECESP).
The H&M Group proposes a B2B initiative to help its clients to accelerate sustainable production efficiently. Treadler offers external companies to access the Group’s global supply chain and its extensive circular strategy.
This competition for start-ups less than 5 years and located in Europe, aims at rewarding businesses that are facilitating Circular Economy innovations.
In preparation for the Annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in January 2020, PBL Netherlands and Utrecht University, in consultation with PACE, organised an international workshop on targets for a circular economy on 17 January 2020.
The first edition of the Circular Rethinking Academy - a winter school on Circular Economy - took place in Rovereto (Italy) from 3rd February to 5th March 2020.