An interactive session to bridge the EU public and private side of the built environment sector by sharing innovations, perspectives and opinions on current trends and future needs to scale up circularity in buildings and infrastructure and thereby achieving EU’s climate and biodiversity goals.

This parallel session discussed the benefits of circular economy for climate goals, preserving the biodiversity and bringing about a fair transition through social enterprise.

Extended Producer Responsibility Schemes (EPR) are increasingly used across Member States to finance proper waste management. The workshop discussed the take-aways, benefits but also shortcomings of EPR Schemes, in order to focus on the various areas of improvements. Particular emphasis was placed on the role played by eco-modulation of fees.

While digital networking is of great advantage for everyday life, the incredible amounts of electrical devices bring with it some particularly ecological risks, especially with regard to the use of resources. This is why the European Commission in the New Circular Economy Action Plan announced a Circular Electronics Initiative. There are still many challenges to be discussed during this workshop.

This workshop brought together experts from various organisations to discuss topics like the undervalued importance of infrastructure in tackling climate change, discuss the markets for secondary resources, the relevance of deconstruction design to enable the renovation wave, and stress value-chains collaboration.

At a moment when the EU stakeholders hold their breath for the EU Textiles strategy to be published, this workshop aims to give a final signal to the policy makers that a high level of ambition needs to be maintained in the upcoming proposal in order to create a watershed moment for the textile production and consumption, and more importantly for its global impact on the society and environment.

This workshop aims to better understand the key ingredients for the successful circular transformation as well as the definition of the optimal profile of the transition broker.

This workshop used the concrete example of procurement of charging stations for electrical vehicles to link circular procurement to the energy transition.

The Cities & Regions Leadership Group in 2021 continued the work on the analysis of indicators to measure the transition to the circular economy in cities and regions.

This workshop capitalized on those discussion points, gearing the discussions towards the definition of operational cooperation leads between different initiatives supporting CE transition in cities and regions.

This workshop session was divided into three different thematic blocks focussing on:

• Module 1: Agri-plastics and circularity - best practice and the road ahead
• Module 2: Bio-based Industry trends and utilization of secondary biomass
• Module 3: Food waste and youth: how universities can help inspire action