https://www.instagram.com/impact.furnitureIMPACT Furniture is part of Oxfam Belgium. Through its Upcycle Your Office project, it is in the process of developing a catalogue of upcycled office furniture.
The plywood panels are recovered from old office furniture thrown away by local businesses and organisations and subsequently used as a raw material for making new furniture items.
The profits are ploughed back into Oxfam Belgium and help finance projects to fight poverty.
The textile industry’s figures are clear: of the 648 000 tons of textiles placed on the market each year in France, only 38% are collected for recycling.
The 10 proposals set out in this white paper (in French) seek to meet three objectives. The first consists of building the Extended Producer Responsibility approach around environmental benefits. The second is to support the development of a sustainable textile and footwear recycling industry. The last is to meet the legitimate expectations of transparency and traceability. The proposals aim to achieve these objectives in the context of the three key steps in a product’s lifecycle: (1) fabrication, (2) consumption, and (3) regeneration.
Tarkett has developed a technology at its Dutch Waalwijk carpet production facility enabling the separation of the two principal components of carpet tiles. Its recycling centre creates two streams of materials that can be recycled and transformed into high-quality resources for new products.
Tarkett is pioneering post-use flooring recycling in Europe. It is working with IKEA to transform used Tarkett flooring from the IKEA Kungens Kurva store into new flooring.
The French National Institute for Circular Economy (INEC) has published its Programme Ecole circulaire(in FR), whose objective is to use schools - a place familiar to all - as showcases for the circular economy. It contains a series of good practices (for public and private actors, youth) - over 40 territorial initiatives and 50 operational solutions - on the following themes:
school buildings (construction, renovation)
energy supply
inner/outer spatial planning
stationery-equipment-furniture
school cleaning (products and apparel, staff training)
food loop (local and sustainable food, waste, water fountains)
Given the need totake biodiversity more into account in circular economy projects, this study aims to stress the links between the two and to clarify the role played by the circular economy in preserving ecosystems.
Several guiding circular economy principles contribute to reducing the impacts of our activities on ecosystems, such as non-toxicity, optimisation of resource management, promotion of renewable resources and looping of flows. The study also highlights the fact that each lever for implementing the circular economy can and should factor in biodiversity: land-use planning, normative framework, innovation, awareness raising and training, and economic support.
The Federal Council for Sustainable Development Belgium has issued a formal response to the Federal Belgian Action Plan on the Circular Economy. The council addressed issues regarding the substance and procedure of the action plan.
Procedural issues include the vagueness of the plan's exact intentions and deadlines as well as the lack of a better governance mechanism. Substantive issues include:
more focus needed on the social challenges associated with the introduction of a circular economy
more focus on the impact on the climate of increasing digitalisation
recycling of critical metals, and
importance of removing all known barriers (regulatory, fiscal, financial, etc.) to the circular transition.
The circular economy is an alternative to the dominant economic model, which causes considerable damage to the environment as it is based on the linear use of resources.
The development of the circular economy has been hindered by a number of economic, technological and regulatory constraints.
EpE's natural resources commission has spent three years identifying what makes circular economy initiatives successful. An analysis of 27 circular economy initiatives carried out by companies shows that partnerships are one key to overcoming these constraints. A closer examination of these partnerships sheds light on various forms of governance.
