circulareconomy.earth is a project set up by Chatham House's Environment and Society Programme. It enables users to explore the policy and trade dynamics associated with transitioning from a linear to a circular economy model, as well as providing analyses of the associated opportunities and trade-offs.
This programme builds on the solid foundations laid by previous programmes.
Chapter 1 sets out a vision of the circular economy up to 2030 and 2050.
Chapter 2 addresses general measures used to help deliver a circular economy in the Netherlands. They affect the various phases of the product value chains.
Chapter 3 describes measures that relate to specific product groups, such as furniture, plastic packaging and housing.
Chapter 4 addresses supporting measures for a number of topics, such as knowledge & innovation, the Circular Netherlands Accelerator!, market incentives, financing instruments and circular procurement.
Chapter 5 covers the collaboration between the parties involved in this programme.
Chapter 6 describes which resources are available for the plans in this programme.
ADVANCE Circular is an Erasmus+ project, focusing on linking the tourism industry with VET (Vocational Education and Training) to embrace circularity. The brochure describes the project which aims to assess the readiness of the tourism sector and VET institutions for adopting circular principles in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia and Spain.
"Are we ready for circularity?" is part of the second stage (Mapping the Scene & Creating Bridges). It finds that despite progress in raising awareness of circularity, significant efforts are needed to overcome financial, educational and regulatory barriers. Strengthening strategic partnerships, increasing funding support and enhancing training opportunities will be vital to advance circularity readiness in the tourism and VET sectors in these countries.
Sanna Markkanen, Anum Sheikh, Diana Potjomkina, Martin Porter, Bianca Drotleff (CISL), Bettina Bahn-Walkowiak, Thomas Götz, Henning Wilts (Wuppertal Institute), with support from Giacomo Sebis and Krisztina Zálnoky.
This report delves into the business case for accelerated EU action on the circular economy.
It provides policy recommendations for the forthcoming Circular Economy Act, focusing on the business perspective and how the Act could support the EU’s resilience and competitive sustainability. It highlights barriers and actions identified by companies across various sectors.
The report stresses that a more ambitious and integrated approach, driven by the Circular Economy Act and other strategic EU initiatives, is essential for achieving the EU’s broader goals of climate neutrality, industrial success and social equity.
The authors aim to improve the understanding of both businesses and policy makers about the urgent need to accelerate the circular economy transition.
Up2Circ is an international project funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme. The overall aim is to help European SMEs go circular.
The project assists SMEs: there are awareness-raising and training modules and information on how to apply for EU funding. The platform has prepared a catalogue of its success stories.
The platform is also building a network of stakeholders: people with access to many SMEs, expertise in a given sector and/or the circular economy, advanced technologies or social innovation. These people will have access to Up2Circ's tools for helping SMEs.
The website also has information on circular events. The project organisers have experience with assisting SMEs; with this project they are focusing on the circular dimension.
The Horizon Europe POLYMEER project aims to establish a sustainable bio-based value chain for bioplastic products. By efficiently converting wet brewers’ spent grain into high added value materials, it is endeavouring to diversify the array of innovative material solutions capable of replacing traditional plastics.
The report presents the progress the Commission has made in implementing the 2022 strategy for the outermost regions. It shows that the Commission has delivered on its commitment to reflect the outermost regions’ characteristics in legislative proposals, policy initiatives and programmes.
The outermost regions have high potential to develop circular economy solutions. Cohesion policy supports circular economy development there. Both the ERDF and Interreg support waste management and recycling, for instance in Réunion with EUR 18 million of ERDF funding dedicated to the circular economy. Outermost regions also benefit from support under the LIFE programme. Several of these regions have designed circular strategies, such as the Circular Economy Conference of the Azores.
Purman Recycling and Processing Ltd. has developed the purman® method, a mechanical recycling process for rigid polyurethane (PU) and polyisocyanurate (PIR) foams.
This paper reviews digital tools that support the transition to a circular economy in the built environment.
It explores how computer-aided design, building information modeling and computational plugins can assist architects and engineers in creating more sustainable buildings. While Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) remains the main approach for evaluating environmental impacts, the study highlights other methods and tools that can help assess circular design strategies, such as computational methods to design with reused elements and circularity indicators. The paper identifies both the strengths and limitations of these digital tools.
This research is useful to academics and to practitioners designing buildings aligned with circular economy principles.
The Horizon Europe project CHEERS is a new biorefinery concept. It takes underutilised or waste secondary streams (such as bagasse, wastewater, CO2 and CH4) from the brewery industry, processes them in biorefineries and converts them into innovative bio-based products.
It produces bioproducts for industrial applications: insect protein, disinfectant, microbial protein, ectoine and caproic acid.
