This report looks at how scrap steel from the EU's increasing numbers of end-of-life ships can help decarbonise the European steel industry, strengthen industrial resilience, create green jobs, preserve and develop maritime skills and build a truly circular economy.

The steel industry expects demand for scrap to rise due to calls for lower carbon footprints and the implementation of new steelmaking technologies. Ship recycling is a significant and largely untapped opportunity to meet this demand.

Policies should support the development of safe and environmentally sound ship recycling, and stimulate material recovery and reuse. This will enable the EU to reduce dependence on imports, conserve valuable resources and advance toward climate neutrality.

Greening metals and minerals production, including CRMs, comes with higher capital and operating costs – a 'green premium'. This reflects investment in decarbonising production processes, ensuring robust environmental and social safeguards and advancing circularity.

Manufacturers appear hesitant to absorb such premia and a credible green-premium market for CRMs is unlikely to emerge without regulatory intervention.

This analysis has laid out a phased, two-tier pathway towards a premium market. The first tier would focus on setting minimum market-access requirements, in order to level the playing field and exclude the worst performers from EU market access. A second tier of instruments is therefore needed to reward those who exceed baseline standards through targeted, conditional incentives.

The BioBoosters hackathon model has brought together innovators who have come up with workable solutions for a wide range of challenges in the bioeconomy sector. The programme is coming to an end, and this report sets out how the project connected regional innovation systems across the Baltic Sea Region to a joint open innovation platform tackling business-driven circular transition challenges.

It explores the relevance, efficiency, impact and sustainability of the hackathon model and the inter-regional cooperation dimension.

The analysis is based on data and feedback from 18 challenge provider companies, nearly 100 mentored teams and over 500 connected industry and research specialists. It looks at what makes this hackathon model impactful and the added value of an international network.

BioBoosters is a bioeconomy business accelerator. It runs a business-driven hackathon concept to boost the circular transition of the bioeconomy sector. 

The hackathon concept is simple: identify a problem and bring innovators around the table to find a solution. For instance, hemp production in Estonia is flourishing – but the company growing it had no viable use for the stalks. The innovators explored options such as hemp-based filament for 3D printing, hemp as a substrate for mushroom cultivation for biodegradable packaging and extracting enzymes from hemp via fermentation-based processes.

This report covers another eight hackathons, tackling logistics, wood, activated carbon, wine corks, soil health and apples. 

This report explores the links between circularity and economic value, offering a new perspective on how linear practices lead to economic inefficiencies.

CGR has built up a huge body of data by mapping material flows, and this report uses that as a basis to look further and ask about the economic value of the materials we use, the products we consume and the systems we build—and where value is lost or not created.

Current economic models leave substantial value untapped: resources are over-extracted, materials wasted, products underused, and social and economic opportunities missed. The report looks at value creation and loss in mining & extraction, manufacturing, agrifood, construction, mobility and consumables. It also explores the circular potential in each sector.

Businesses across industries increasingly recognise circularity as a strategic lever for resilience, competitiveness and growth. Sourcing rare earths and other critical minerals is also becoming a geopolitical challenge, making the case for circular supply chains.

The conversation has shifted from why circularity matters to how it can be implemented at scale. However, circular strategies are complex to operationalise, so companies require clear priorities, smart design and strong partnerships to overcome scaling challenges.

This white paper outlines methods for prioritisation, approaches to design circular supply chains and key enablers that are essential for scale. It offers leaders actionable strategies to unlock economic value and accelerate circular transformation.

This audit aimed to evaluate the action taken by the European Commission and the Member States with a view to achieving the EU’s objectives for municipal waste.

It assessed whether the Commission’s legal initiatives and enforcement were fit for purpose; whether the four sampled Member States have made good progress in achieving EU waste targets and objectives; and whether the 16 sampled projects in these Member States – co-financed with EU funds – were implemented well in terms of time, cost and capacity.

The audit covered the period from 2014 to 2024. It found that while the Commission has boosted targets and requirements, many Member States face challenges in their progress towards circularity, mainly due to financial constraints and weaknesses in planning and implementation.

Scaling up bio-based industries can strengthen the EU’s strategic autonomy and competitiveness, foster innovation and create growth and jobs.

The study focuses on three product classes within the bio-based industry that demonstrate significant potential for scaling up: (i) bio-based materials and chemicals, (ii) innovative food and feed ingredients and (iii) bio-based soil nutrients and enhancers.

Key recommendations include leveraging Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking flagship grant applications to build a pipeline of promising projects, expanding the European Circular Bioeconomy Fund model to enable high-risk investment in early-stage bio-based ventures, and creating an eligibility checker for bioeconomy and circular economy projects.

This report addresses the question of whether Flanders, with its limited space, will be able to produce enough biomass in the future to supply the bioeconomy and continue to feed the increasing population.

Four scenarios were used, providing insight into the demand development for biobased raw materials for feed, food, fuel and fibre.

It found that:

• An open economy, with international imports/exports of bio-based raw materials, is crucial for a small, densely populated and prosperous region like Flanders.
• Long-term collaboration with other regions and countries is a strategic necessity. The energy transition, protein shift and circular transition must be streamlined to run synergistically. This can reduce the pressure on raw bio-materials.

The summary is in English.

Every five years, the European Environment Agency publishes a state of the environment report.

The 2025 report stresses that climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat to Europe’s competitiveness, which depends on natural resources. Protecting natural resources, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and reducing pollution will build the resilience of vital societal functions that depend on nature, such as food security, drinking water and flood defences.

We need to rethink the links between our economy and the natural environment, land, water and natural resources. The circular economy is part of this dynamic, and is addressed in chapter 4 on Managing the dynamic between our economy and our natural resources.