Berlin has the potential to become the first Circular City in Germany, due to its growing variety of initiatives, grass-roots and research work in the area of circular economy (CE).
This report provides information on the development of the project Circular Berlin, which started in 2018 and is financed by the EIT, under Horizon 2020.
The project consists of 4 phases:
Pre-assessment (conducting awareness meeting with CE professionals, identifying CE initiatives, finding partners etc.) - already completed
Customers from the MUD brand can lease or buy their jeans, benefit from a free repair service, and return the worn out items to have them recycled into new denim products - so that the iconic piece of clothing remains in use for the longuest time. This brand philosophy saves 78% water and 61% CO2-eq per jeans compared to industry standards.
Rediscover Fashion is a social enterprise that produces 100 % redesigned and repurposed clothing, accessories, and home ware ranges from unwanted textiles, preventing the materials from being sent to landfill.
Estonian leather goods maker Stella Soomlais has come up with an innovative bag design that enables old or damaged leather bags to be turned into new leather goods, with little leftover material.
ISATIÓ was a Brussels SME that recovered samples from the textiles industry to create unique designer clothing, with manufacturing all done locally and the supply chain covered entirely by bicycle couriers.
The textile industry is the second most polluting industry in the world. The Next Closet’s mission is change this and inspire people to invest in quality and reuse what they already have, so second hand can become the number one choice.
The Policy Hub (founded in 2019) aims to promote circularity in the apparel and footwear industry and propose policies that accelerate sustainable practices. It represents over 700 stakeholders and has partner organisations:
It looks at each stage, focusing on ways to reduce the environmental impact and considering end of life. The Policy Hub seeks to encourage an ambitious policy framework to speed up the transformation of the apparel and footwear industry towards circularity. It focuses on:
The EU faces multiple challenges (climate crisis, environmental disasters, a lack of competitiveness, falling behind in the digital race, etc.) that it will need to address if it is to ensure long-term sustainable prosperity for European citizens. At the same time, there are two ongoing transitions – the creation of a circular economy and the digital transformation – that could provide the means to address these challenges, if they are managed well.
As the EU and national policymakers are making significant efforts to promote a circular economy on the one hand and a digital economy on the other, Annika Hedberg and Stefan Šipka, together with Johan Bjerkem, argue that it is time to align the agendas as a means to achieve greater sustainability and competitiveness.
