The Romanian Government has approved an Action Plan promoting the Circular Economy as part of the National Strategy for the Circular Economy (NSCE). The action plan sets out a national vision for speeding up the transition to a circular economy, with measures geared to the nine economic sectors with the greatest potential for circularity in Romania's economy: agriculture and forestry; automotive; construction; food and beverages; packaging; textiles; electrical and electronic equipment; waste; water; wastewater.
The action plan has a cross-sectoral strand including promotion activities and a monitoring platform. It also stipulates 52 priority measures scheduled to be rolled out between 2024 and 2032.
With 14 automotive brands around the globe, Stellantis is a major industry player. In March 2022, it presented its Dare Forward 2030 strategic plan, aiming to achieve carbon net zero by 2038 while reducing its consumption of natural resources. The plan is steered by the Circular Economy Business Unit and is based on remanufacture, repair, reuse and recycle.
Eco Repair Score NV and VITO have developed the Eco Repair Score® to assess the environmental impact of a specific car repair job. It does this using a single score, with categories from A to E and associated colour coding.
Fast fashion and disposing of clothes at the end of their lives are generally considered to be the main issues in terms of textile waste. However, pre-consumer waste is another major problem. This occurs a few steps further back in the manufacturing process, and deals with all waste materials created in the supply chain when a product is being made.
Unlike post-consumer waste, it is easier to keep pre-consumer waste away from a landfill or an incinerator as the fabric or garment is essentially brand new, despite one or more repairable defects.
So, finding ways to re-use or use up the resources created is the key to creating an endless supply of materials without further depleting natural resources.
At European level, the built environment is responsible for 40% of CO2-eq emissions and roughly 60% of material consumption.
By applying bio-based alternatives to conventional ‘mineral’ construction materials, the environmental impact of the EU27+UK sector can be reduced by 18%.
However, there is a limit to the sustainable wood supply that can be harvested without compromising vital functions provided by forests, and the projected increase in wood consumption is not compatible with the realistic growth potential of harvesting activities. Therefore resource efficiency, bio-based added value or demand for new housing should be carefully weighted in to ensure a sustainable shift, the study concludes.
This book collates leading-edge research and industry best practice to provide a ‘one-stop shop’ exploring the complex and interconnected issues surrounding sustainability in the sector.
It includes innovative examples from different regions, addressing topics from policies to supply chain issues and materials innovation. Five unique case studies of sustainable businesses provide examples of pioneering practice. The book brings together both academic and industry perspectives on the critical areas that require immediate action to move towards a more sustainable fashion, clothing and textile sector.
Part VI features five chapters by leading authors covering the circular economy in the sector, including a chapter by Professor Jacqueline Cramer.
The ECOSWEEE project has received EU funding under the LIFE programme. It aims to increase the collection rate of small WEEE and portable batteries.
The project recognises the importance of stakeholder engagement as a catalyst for change. It aims to create a collaborative platform on Linkedin where stakeholders can come together, share knowledge, and collectively work towards improving collection rates and promoting sustainable practices.
The project will harness the power of stakeholders' expertise and commitment to drive tangible impact and contribute to a more sustainable future.
The One Click LCA Building Circularity software makes it possible to design buildings using more circular criteria. The software tracks, quantifies and optimises both the circularity of materials sourced and used and end-of-life circularity.
In recent years, the concept of green jobs has been the focus of increasing attention. The principles of green jobs and green employment are grounded in a variety of evolving concepts such as green economy, green growth, sustainable development and circular economy, which are multi-dimensional and their understanding evolves in both academic and political contexts.
At the EU policy level, the green transition is seen as an opportunity to create jobs in existing and emerging economic sectors. A large number of different approaches to how green jobs can be defined and classified have been put forward. Differences and gaps identified in these existing definitions and frameworks have exposed the need to create a novel, integratedtaxonomy for green jobs, which is developed in this report.
In the context of the data needs for EU policies in economic activities related to circular economy, climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation and bioeconomy, in 2019 Eurostat initiated a project implemented by Prognos and DevStat to develop a method that allows deriving key economic variables on these activities, which can be used as a framework also for other transition sectors.
This Prognos study contracted by the European Commission and Eurostat, and published in 2023, is a description of a generic conceptual framework to define various sectors of the environmental economy, identify activities, and analyse data by using different data sources (e.g. national or regional data).
Other documents produced under the same project can be consulted here.
