In September 2019, nine Resourceful Cities embarked on their journey to develop next-generation urban resource centres as a way to accelerate the transition to a circular economy. 

The nine cities together with their local stakeholders were all able to deliver a high-quality Integrated Action Plan. Every one of those action plans is not just an expression of their resilience in times of crisis: it is also a manifestation of their individual response to their local context and needs.

This publication summarises their collective journey as a network and tells the story of each of the nine partner cities from their own perspective. Their journey shows that cities are big enough to make a difference and small enough to make it happen.

This publication summarizes the collective journey of 9 European cities seeking to design and develop next generation urban resource centres as a means to accelerate the transition to a circular
economy. It also tells the story of each of the 9 cities from their own perspective.

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.

The widespread use of polyurethane foams in processing technology leads to high volumes of excess waste. Proper handling of this waste is of paramount importance for environmental, social, and economic reasons.

In order to reduce waste, our project aims to solve the mechanical recycling of closed-cell, rigid, cross-linked polyurethane foams. The rigid foam waste generated in our plant is subjected to a special grinding process. Grinds are mixed with a custom-formulated binder in a ratio of 70-30%, to produce upcycled polyurethane foam sheets.

During the research, we first identified the upcycling opportunities of closed-cell polyurethane foam materials and purchased the necessary machinery. Later, we started the production of polyurethane foam and finally developed the prototypes.