Finnish energy company Fortum had developed a circular renewable energy service, dubbed HorsePower, that used recycled materials to provide a bedding management service for stable-owners, as well as using manure for energy.
Fjällräven is giving wool waste a second life by using it for innovative purposes, like padding in jackets or backplate in backpacks.
The Finnish region of Päijät-Häme is a strong promoter of circular economy practices. In line with the national strategy, the region focuses on regional-level initiatives. It therefore seeks to engage various regional stakeholders and foster a common vision and strategy.
The formation of a stakeholder group through a series of networking events has led to a constantly evolving roadmap. Several projects are currently being implemented on the basis of this roadmap, and many good practices have been achieved which serve as an example of a circular economy in the region.
The strategy was originally published in 2017.
ResQ Club is a Finnish company and mobile application, which also covers parts of Sweden, Poland and Germany. Its goal is to combat food waste by connecting sustainable restaurants, cafés and food shops with consumers who appreciate affordable quality food.
L&T organises the collection of waste oils, oil-contaminated water and a range of emulsions from industry. The collected materials are analysed and processed at L&T’s recycling plant.
EcoProtech has developed the EPAD (EcoProtech Advanced Digestion) technology. EPAD is based on a continuous, industrial scale, anaerobic digestion process.
The Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra is a future fund collaborating with partners to research, trial and implement bold ideas that shape the future. It aims to make Finland a pioneer in sustainable well-being.
Since 2015, Sitra has been working to lead the way to a circular economy – a new kind of society in which everyday lives and well-being are no longer based on excessive consumption and fossil fuel use.
Currently, Sitra’s work focuses on supporting a fair transition to a circular economy and investigating how business can be based on sharing instead of ownership. Sitra is also working to advance circular trade policies, to increase the understanding of environmental effects of digitisation and to explore the potential of the circular economy to safeguard biodiversity.
Finnish jewelry company EKORU makes jewelry out of discarded Finnish coins, old silver spoons and other cutlery. After Finland changed to the Euro, the metal of old Finnish coins found other purposes.
Finnish company Pa-Ri Materia gives used office furniture a second life by refurbishing and selling it. The company purchases some of the furniture it recycles, while certain companies pay for their furniture to be recycled or reused.
TOMRA's Circular Economy Division was established in January 2019 to speed up the transformation to a circular economy and shape future waste and resource systems.
TOMRA’s cutting-edge sorting technologies retain valuable resources by extracting high-purity fractions from mixed waste and metal streams in the most remote parts of the world. Its technology and equipment has been used in the world’s most advanced recycling plants.
TOMRA is the world leader in reverse vending solutions. It provides an automated method for collecting, sorting and handling used beverage containers for recycling or reuse. TOMRA has over 84 000 facilities in more than 60 markets.
Calefa is a Finnish company specialized in the reuse of residual heat from industry by redirecting the excess heat from industrial processes either to the customer company’s own use or to the district heating network, instead of wasting it as condensed water or air.
The City of Helsinki’s Roadmap for Circular and Sharing Economy is one of the 147 actions in the Carbon-neutral Helsinki 2035 Action Plan.
The roadmap includes the following four focuses:
The goals for each focus are set until 2035, with interim goals and supporting practical actions for each one.
Reducing plastic consumption and increasing the use of recycled plastic are among the main topics of the roadmap.
This roadmap is the result of debates in workshops with experts from both inside and outside the City. A team of representatives of the City’s Environmental Services coordinated the work.
Is your lifestyle good or bad for the environment? After taking this short test by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, you will receive tailor-made tips. The aim is to help you save time and money and so to improve your quality of life.
Tarpaper Recycling is a recycling specialist minimising the environmental impacts of construction waste. It has developed a patented method to recycle bitumen from roofing-felt waste by converting it into a material that can be used as a binder in asphalt production.
The Finnish city of Lahti has been pioneering industrial symbiosis at the Kujala Waste Treatment Centre where all sorts of waste are reused. Several companies have established interconnected material flows, thus making one’s residues another one’s raw materials.
Globe Hope, a Finnish textiles and cosmetics SME, has been creating bags and accessories from recycled and leftover materials since 2003.
In the framework of the CIRCWASTE project, coordinated by SYKE (Finnish Environment Institute), pioneering municipalities have developed local circular economy roadmaps in 2019.
The town of Riihimäki is already a member of FISU (Finnish Sustainable Communities), a network of Finnish municipalities committed to becoming waste-free, and has now adopted a circular economy roadmap focusing on the participation of local actors.
In 2017, the local authorities asked the 29,000 inhabitants of this town what sustainable choices they would be ready to make and how the municipal council could best enable these. Inhabitants also contributed ideas to develop the resource efficiency of Riihimäki.
The circular economy and resource efficiency roadmap of Riihimäki covers five themes:
Every one of these themes is dealt with by taking into account the following points of view:
In addition to municipal actions, the Riihimäki roadmap also includes commitments to circular economy by local companies and communities. The roadmap also accentuates the education of students and recent graduates with the aim of incorporating the circular economy into all professional fields.
As cooperation is central to circular economym, the Riihimäki roadmap’s guiding principle is to increase cooperation between different communities and companies. The aim is to share good practice by developing a cluster that will monitor how companies are progressing and promote circular economy cooperation.
In the framework of the CIRCWASTE project, coordinated by SYKE (Finnish Environment Institute), pioneering municipalities have developed local circular economy roadmaps in 2019. This roadmap, adopted by Finland's fourth biggest city, is based first and foremost on what stakeholders identify as local strengths, special characteristics and challenges.
Vantaa’s roadmap lists the priorities, objectives and actions to take in 2019-2030 that could a promote circular economy locally. Its priorities are the following:
The objectives are to be reached by 2030 in four timeframes, with responsibility for implementation shared among several local stakeholders that vary from municipal utilities to private companies. Specific indicators have been developed to measure and report on progress.
To stimulate circular business models locally, the municipality will set up a local cluster in cooperation with Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority HSY.
Vantaa’s roadmap also puts a strong emphasis on construction and land use, committing to increase local (re)-use of soil and recycled materials in construction, which should reduce GHG emissions from transport. The use of demolished concrete has already increased and become fairly commonplace in infrastructure projects. It is used in street structures, repairs of building elevations and green landscaping.
In addition to this, Vantaa aims to develop a set of procurement criteria incorporating circular economy principles. As the circular economy benefits the natural environment, businesses and residents alike, cooperation among stakeholders is central to implementation of the roadmap.
In the framework of the CIRCWASTE project, coordinated by SYKE (Finnish Environment Institute), pioneering municipalities have developed local circular economy roadmaps in 2019. The City of Porvoo is one of these and published its own circular economy roadmap in May 2019 to steer efforts that promote resource efficiency and circular economy in the coming years, so it can build on successes to date that range.
A steering group of 16 municipal civil servants and other local stakeholders drafted this roadmap, which focuses in particular on the following objectives:
The amount of high-quality soil and rock is not increasing in Finland, nor is the land area growing. This is why in Porvoo stakeholders are desiging a built environment that takes into account the sustainable use of soil materials and other resources.
Porvoo also aims to reduce food waste and improve the recycling of municipal waste through counselling and outreach for and to citizens. The impact of counselling on the volume of food waste is monitored at schools by weighing plate waste, for example. In addition to this, Porvoo will promote waste sorting by improving the quality of the recycling network using life-cycle analysis.
The roadmap also includes specific circular economy tasks and challenges for the local authorities and companies of the City of Porvoo to implement, with the most urgent having a completion date of 2020 while others have targets for 2030.
In the framework of the CIRCWASTE project, Southwest Finland developed a circular economy roadmap in late 2018 to help implementation of the national waste plan and define regional objectives with concrete measures to achieve these.
The Finnish Environment Institute formed an expert network on circular economy, and began identifying regional strengths and special characteristics to start with.
In 2018, the Central Finland region produced approximately 1,8 million tonnes of different kinds of waste. Stakeholders thus sought to focus on waste management during the drafting process, and received training on, for example, plastic lifespan and creativity in the circular economy alongside many networking opportunities.
While the overarching theme is public procurement, the regional strategy focuses on the following sectors in particular:
This roadmap seeks to reduce the amount of construction and demolition waste and increase reuse of such waste to 70%. The partial activities helping to reach the targets are listed in the roadmap.
Different stakeholders, ranging from municipal or regional authorities, to national institutes, educational establishments, and private companies will take responsibility for implementation.
In 2018, Finland's easternmost region of North Karelia adopted a circular economy roadmap as part of the CIRCWASTE project. Its objectives are to:
Regarding waste management overall, this strategy aims to increase knowledge and change overall consumer attitudes.
A system to recycle construction waste is set for development, and will focus on logistics, demolition methods and supervision. This strategy aims to improve training concerning waste management in particular, and motivate companies to consider waste already in the planning stage.
As for municipal waste management, the strategy hopes to improve the collection network and logistics by creating incentives and introducing monitoring systems.
The objectives are to be reached in different timeframes by 2030. For each partial target, responsibilities have been shared among various actors: municipalities, the Regional Council of North Karelia, private companies, educational establishments, organisations etc.
