This reading guide is designed to help architects, building companies, real estate developers, material suppliers, policymakers and other stakeholders navigate the wealth of information available on circular principles in the built environment. 

By curating key publications, guides and tools, the Leadership Group on the Circular Built Environment aims to provide a comprehensive starting point for stakeholders to integrate circular practices into their organisations. The guide is structured around key themes, followed by a detailed list of the publications for further reading. 

This guide was presented during the EU Circular Talk on Navigating the Circular Built Environment: presentation of the ECESP Reading Guide.

This report makes a solid business case for building circular, exploring five enabling strategies which showcase how built environment players can unlock robust, long-term value by embracing the circular economy.

Specifically, it examines five different circular strategies, buildings and building components, predominantly from an asset owners’ perspective, and has sought to understand the associated value that these strategies provide.

Value needs to be considered holistically across the supply chain. Understanding the business case for building circular means considering the value - current and future - of all its different elements and layers, and input from all the stakeholders involved.

(The report cannot be downloaded: you will have to read it online.)

This highly theoretical research paper aims to map out ways and means to build a body of knowledge on the process of regeneration and the ways in which regenerative circular economies may function.

Ultimately, it finds that if stakeholders are willing to follow a bio-inspired approach for co-investing resources, time and planning while considering specific system characteristics and the underlying contexts, then small changes in governance, behavioural patterns and technology improvement may contribute substantially to the development of regenerative circular economies.

This article examines open innovation approaches promoting the development of stakeholder-driven circular economy models. 

It describes key elements of open innovation and circular value cocreation,  utilises the findings from a systematic review to identify opportunities and challenges related to the open circular innovation paradigm, and presents theoretical implications and an action plan highlighting the importance of engaging in collaborative behaviour with stakeholders.

It emphasises a cocreation culture that encourages the sharing of resources, competencies and capabilities, while safeguarding organisations' IP. It finds that there is scope for practitioners to develop circular economy ecosystems that increase practitioners' bottom lines, while reducing their environmental impact.

Cities have a critical role to play in the transition from a linear to a circular economy. They are centres of consumption and production, and they host the systems and policies that enable and govern urban life. 

This guidance document aims to help cities identify actions and solutions that can accelerate their circular transition. The document covers eight key sectors with high circular potential: Built environment, Consumer goods, Food, Manufacturing, Mobility and logistics, Tourism and leisure, Waste and material management and Water and wastewater management. 

The circular approaches that can be adopted in each sector are introduced first, and this is followed by examples of potential circular actions and solutions.

See Circular City Centre - C3.

The circular economy can help us address many of the crucial challenges and problems that we and our planet face today, such as wastage in different forms, resource depletion and climate change. Cities have a very important role in the circular transition as cradles or ecosystems and catalysts for circular change. 

This guidance document outlines why cities should actively engage in and support others in the circular transition and how they can do that through 15 circular steps. The steps are divided into three phases: prepare and plan, facilitate and act, and invest and implement.

See Circular City Centre - C3.

Poly(L-Lactide) (PLA), a fully biobased aliphatic polyester, constitutes around 30% of global production of biobased and/or biodegradable plastics.

It has attracted significant attention in the last decade due to its exceptional properties, such as high tensile strength, biocompatibility, (bio)degradability in various media, easy recyclability and good melt-state processability by the conventional processes of the plastic/textile industry. PLA has a number of applications, such as packaging and controlled release matrices for fertilisers and pesticides. 

This paper looks at how blending PLA with other polymers can improve its shortcomings.

The rise in demand for electronics and programmed obsolescence have increased electronic waste. New sustainable and/or recyclable electronic devices need to be developed.

Devices could be made sustainable by using biobased materials and avoiding those which harm the environment. These materials could be used to develop specific devices, such as resistive temperature sensors attached to flexible materials. The variation in the resistance of the sensor depends on the material of which they are made. In this work, resistive temperature sensors are screen printed using four different pastes: a silver-based commercial paste and three carbon-based pastes. The sensors are printed onto glass fibre substrate to ensure flexibility and infused with a resin to produce a composite.

The second-hand clothing industry significantly reduces the environmental impact of textile production and has an underexplored socioeconomic impact.

This report, commissioned by Humana People to People and Sympany+, analyses the socioeconomic impact of this industry in the EU and the United Kingdom, as well as in three African countries: Ghana, Kenya and Mozambique.

It found that the second-hand clothing industry generates significant economic value through green jobs in both continents, supporting economic activity in line with environmental policies.

Moreover, the industry contributes to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, for example by supporting the livelihoods of thousands of second-hand clothing traders and providing affordable clothing options to people around the world.

This report describes what Circle Economy achieved in 2024.

In 2024, they rolled out a new approach to delivering impact which focused on three key objectives to accelerate the global transition to a circular economy: empowering decision-makers (they provided indicators and evidence to ensure accountability in circular economy ambitions), financial support for solutions (they raised sufficient financial capital for circular and just solutions) and building capacity (this involved equipping key actors with the tools needed to implement circular solutions).

The report gives figures to describe their impact. For instance, they have directly supported over 970 businesses and organisations and trained over 7200 people in circular economy principles.