Over the past decades concepts such as sustainability and industrial development have slowly come to the same operational logic, as demonstrated by a growing interest in exploring and describing the synergy between developments in the circular economy and industrial digitalisation. There is agreement on their complementarity evolution paths, but no outlook is available regarding the co-evolution staging and structuring. This paper based on desk and empirical research presents an approach to outline the likely path of evolution.

So far, the notion of transition to sustainability has been applied in single sector studies, while reality indicates that the systemic change required cuts across thematic technologies and sectors. The approach taken can be useful to enrich current analyses.

As an impact leader and frontrunner promoting resource circularity, TOMRA has extensively explored, analysed and collaborated with value chain partners to address the ever-increasing global problem of waste. This white paper presents the challenges, projections and opportunities involved in managing post-consumer waste in developed and developing countries. It describes how society can speed up the transition to a circular economy by collecting and recycling waste, especially plastic packaging and other carbon-intensive materials.

The white paper can be downloaded from TOMRA's website, but this requires registering in a third party's data base and submitting your email address. 

This joint position paper from the Wardrobe Change coalition contains recommendations for the EU Strategy for Sustainable Textiles. It has been signed by 25 civil society organisations. The paper sets out recommendations structured around four overarching principles:

• Make sustainable textile products the norm
• Drive resource-sufficient textile consumption
• Leave the linear business model behind
• Hold the EU textile industry responsible for its role in the world.

The COVID-19 may have hit the pause button on tourism, but it also highlighted the need to switch to the circular economy.

This report summarises the findings of a two-year policy dialogue with the city of Granada in Spain, and provides recommendations and a vision to transition to a circular economy. It draws on Granada’s own experience with the transformation of a wastewater treatment plant into a bio factory in 2015, which contributed to increased water reuse and the production of new material from waste. The report argues that the city of Granada can play a role as a promoter, facilitator and enabler of the circular economy. This will require a collective and coordinated approach across all stakeholders and levels of government.

The circular economy promises a move away from a linear model of growth (extract, make, dispose) to a sustainable model (recycle, reuse, remake, share). This report, Safe Jobs in the Circular Economy, commissioned by the European Public Service Union (EPSU), focuses on the role of labour in the transition to a circular economy and, in particular, the health and safety of workers operating waste and wastewater management systems.

Romania’s recycling rate of 13% is one of the lowest in the EU with most waste going to landfill. The publication explains how the city of Sălacea, in the north-west of Romania, not only managed to quickly rise from almost no waste recycling to 40% in 3 months, but also how the community reduced its overall waste by 55%.

The case study also explains how political will, commitment from local waste operators and involvement of the community were key to the success of the strategy. The municipality introduced door-to-door household separate collection for 5 types of waste (paper and cardboard, plastic and metal, glass, bio-waste, residual waste) and implemented a four-week education programme with citizens before changing the collection infrastructure.

More than ever during the COVID-19 crisis, the circular economy has asserted itself as the model that can accompany recovery and enable a higher and better growth, through a systemic vision that makes it possible to tackle the most relevant challenges nowadays: the climate crisis and the environmental impact.

Companies must heighten their ambitions over the next Decade of Action, to achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), by adopting a production and consumption model by 2030 that allows societies to keep growing economically, but under planetary boundaries and in the light of societal challenges.

This, in brief, is the content of the report Máxima Ambición Circular para la Década de la Acción (in Spanish) published by Foretica.

ACR+ is launching a publication on the development and implementation of circular bioeconomy strategies in different contexts, focusing on three detailed regional case studies in Navarre, Bayern and Flanders.

Under a cooperation agreement with the French Pays de la Loire region, ACR+ has set up a working group on the circular bioeconomy, with a focus on governance. The working group aims to support the development of local and regional roadmaps for the circular bioeconomy, as public authorities steer and support the development of the circular bioeconomy on their patch.

The publication is the result of activities implemented by ACR+ through the working group.

Commissioned by the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP), which advises the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and co-authored by Circle Economy and Shifting Paradigms, this report uncovers the range of socio-economic and environmental co-benefits that circular mitigation interventions can bring to GEF countries of operation.

The report supports strategic advice by the STAP to the GEF and its implementing partners, and helps carve out a role for these bodies in accelerating the transition to a low-carbon circular economy. Its findings will be highly relevant to the development of future GEF projects and programmes across its different focal areas.

The circular economy offers new answers to the question of how 9 billion people can survive on this planet, accepting that there are planetary boundaries and climate change is ongoing.

The aim of this study is to identify drivers of the big five globally largest material flows by mass - ferrous metals, aluminium, paper, glass, asphalt - from a circular perspective and to understand the story behind them.

The focus is on what the development of the BIG 5 tells us about intentions, because this will also reveal the unintended. 

This study might inspire industrial managers to take the right decision and pave the pathways to a circular society that is just, balances out social and ecological needs and will provide a solid ground for survival of mankind on planet earth.