SCALER provides mechanisms to accelerate the journey towards efficient and quick implementation of industrial symbiosis in the European process industry. They do this by developing action plans and adapted solutions to industrial stakeholders and communities.

SCALER works closely with a wide range of stakeholders including industrial networks, consultancies, researchers and policy makers at various geographic and political levels, to deliver practical tools and guidelines for industry actors engaging in resource efficiency, reuse and sharing.

To achieve this goal, SCALER is developing a set of reports and guides. They offer insights into how businesses can start industrial resource synergies with other companies to minimise their waste and create more value from their production.

The GLOPACK (Granting society with LOw environmental impact innovative PACKaging) project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research programme, investigates food packaging with no environmental footprint and the ability to extend the shelf-life of food products.

The GLOPACK position paper aims at clarifying many debatable points related to bioplastics and biodegradability, especially terminology, and focuses on the benefits of biodegradable (in natural conditions) packaging material that can help the food sector enter the virtuous loop of the circular economy.

The paper also proposes some recommendations (basic, strategic and tactical interventions) to help all stakeholders in the food packaging sector to align with the common goal of ending plastic pollution.

The Circular Aluminium Action Plan is the aluminium sector’s strategy for achieving aluminium’s full potential for a circular economy by 2030. The action plan aims to ensure that all end-of-life aluminium products are collected and recycled efficiently in Europe to maximise the aluminium recycling rates and to keep the material in active use. It builds on the aluminium industry’s Vision 2050 and provides policy recommendations for the sector.

The aluminium industry has the potential to be a key driver in achieving Europe’s ambitions for a climate-neutral and circular economy. Aluminium is by nature circular and fit for multiple recycling: it can be recycled over and over again without losing its original properties (lightness, conductivity, formability, durability, impermeability).

Circular economy (CE) appears everywhere in Europe to be an adequate response to the challenges of resource scarcity. Driven by the development of the European CE Package, many initiatives to accelerate the transition are emerging, both on governmental and private levels, but they lack coordination.

In the wake of the new Circular Economy Action Plan published by the European Commission in March, the "Institut National de l'Economie Circulaire" (INEC) - member of the ECESP Coordination Group -  and Orée have co-authored a study identifying the major CE networks in Europe in order to strengthen the cooperation needed to achieve CE ambitions. By so doing they have pursued their common aim to develop and disseminate a vision of an inclusive and unifying CE.

Read the full study.

This paper by GS1 in Europe highlights the need to structure product data to make it available for circular economy needs. If data isn't structured and can't circulate according to a circular model, it will be very challenging to reach the scale needed for the circular economy plan.

Open standards are a way of uniquely identifying products, locations, machines, packaging, etc. If "global open identifiers" (openly available references for products, etc.) are used, rather than closed-in systems based on data for one limited purpose, it will be possible to share data.

GS1 in Europe is a neutral, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to global standards to improve the efficiency, visibility and sustainability of products around the world. 

How can sustainable consumption and longer lifetime of products be promoted through consumer protection legislation?

This in-depth analysis investigates the contribution, or lack of contribution, of the current EU consumer protection legislation to sustainable consumption and longer lifetime of products. In addition, it gives an overview of the most relevant best practices at national and international level and provides recommendations on the future development and possible reforms of European consumer protection legislation with a view to more sustainable consumption and longer lifetime of products.

This study was commissioned by the European Parliament Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO).

The Data Centre Industry (DCI) is one of the most important pillars of current technological and economic developments.

In DCIs, more than fifty different materials can be found per product, including ferrous, non-ferrous metals, precious metals (PM), platinum group metals (PGM), rare earth elements (REE), plastics and/or ceramics, some being considered as Critical Raw Materials (CRMs).

This assessment aims to study DCI design and material composition (specifically servers and switches), as well as to analyse their performance in a circular economy and provide recommendations for ecodesign guidelines.

How can the EU product safety and compliance framework help promote product durability and tackle planned obsolescence, foster the production of more sustainable products, and achieve more transparent supply chains for consumers?

Product longevity can play a useful role in achieving the Paris Agreement goals – material efficiency is an important contributor to energy efficiency and is also important in its own right. The product safety and compliance instruments available at European level can contribute to these efforts, if wisely applied.

This study was commissioned by the European Parliament Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO).

The fashion industry has a big influence on the global economy and is known for its social and environmental impact. This online course by Wageningen University & Research is an introduction to circular fashion, brought by 30 experts from academia and practice.

After this course, you will be able to:

• Understand the role of sustainability and circularity in fashion
• Understand the importance of design for disassembly and recycling
• Evaluate new biobased materials for textiles and understand the change in production processes
• Disrupt current thinking and mindset in the industry and manage the transition to circular fashion
• Understand economic paradigms and new forms of value creation for circularity in the fashion industry

Read more and enrol.

This review paper of Mark Anthony Camilleri examines relevant regulatory guidelines, policies, and recommendations on sustainable development, where it traces the origins of circular economy (CE). It goes on to shed light on key theoretical underpinnings of CE's closed loop and product service systems.

The findings suggest that the CE's regenerative systems minimise the environmental impact as practitioners reduce their externalities, including waste, emissions, and energy leakages through the use and reuse of resources. Therefore, this contribution offers a critique on CE's inherent limitations and discusses about the implications of having regulatory interventions that are intended to encourage responsible consumption and production behaviours.

Today, only 8.6% of the resources and materials in the global economy are reused or recycled.
A crucial transition to a circular economy is required to reach the environmental goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and to achieve countries’ climate targets as set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

In this context, it is essential to ensure that the transition to a resource-efficient and circular economic model also delivers on social objectives.

This paper introduces the relevance of the circular economy in the international development SDG context. It also explores how a just transition approach can be successfully applied in the circular economy context.