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.
Werflink is an online sharing platform on which construction sites and companies and can share equipment, materials, resources, freight space and facilities. The platform has been set up in collaboration with the Flemish Construction Confederation, construction company BESIX, Circular Flanders and FLOOW2, to create a more circular construction sector.
These factsheets outline circular economy opportunities to design out urban waste and pollution, ensure products and materials maintain their value, and regenerate the natural systems in our cities.
Easy-to-reference, the factsheets are a collation of research and case examples that answer some of the most prevalent questions around what circular economy can bring to cities:
Why is change in cities needed?
What circular economy opportunities address key urban system issues?
What can urban policymakers do to harness circular economy opportunities?
What are the potential economic, social, and environmental benefits of these opportunities?
R-PVC Hub aims to promote cooperation between all stakeholders in the PVC recycling sector, including the businesses collecting waste, processing it and producing items containing recycled material.
One goal of the platform is to inform stakeholders about national and European rules on PVC waste and technological innovations in the field of waste sorting and management and the definition of by-products, waste and secondary raw materials.
It also links up supply and demand: businesses list what they have or need and the precise specifications of the PVC.
An app which enables users to buy circular goods and services near them or online and provides reliable information on what exactly the circular economy means.
Despite companies face several challenges when redesigning their supply chain for the Circular Economy, current literature lacks a systematisation of such challenges and of the ways to overcome them.
Through a systematic literature review, this paper identifies and identifies 24 challenges that may hamper a supply chain redesign for the Circular Economy. Sixteen of these challenges are well known from research in related topics. On the other hand, the remaining eight are relatively new or take on a different relevance within the Circular Economy context.
A multiple case study in the household appliance supply chain has been carried out to explore how these challenges appear in practice and how companies may tackle them.
These include an observation that the 28,000 tonnes of Category 3 IT equipment being shipped for repair or reuse annually in Europe represent only 2.2% of ICT products placed on the market, and 4.5% of the e-waste collected.
The strategies being applied to ensure longevity in the digital industry are also insufficiently comprehensive. In practice the lifetime of many IT products is linked to that of the battery.
In "The contribution of the Digital Industry to repair, remanufacturing and refurbishment in a Circular Economy”, DIGITALEUROPE describes longstanding business practices in the ICT sector which represent, next to waste collection and treatment facilities, the circular economy backbone of the ICT industry in Europe.
With roughly 28,000 tons of IT equipment and spare parts being shipped cross-border annually in Europe, the ICT sector is adopting circular business practices such as designing for longevity, durability and reliability, stimulating reuse, and facilitating refurbishment. There is significant market opportunity for circular economy in the ICT sector: in 2015, the business of refurbishing IT equipment already accounted for €3.1 billion in annual turnover.
European Commission, Open Innovation 2.0 Yearbook 2017-2018, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, Caterina Berbenni-Rehm, Albrecht Broemme, 2018, pp. 38-45. Print ISBN 978-92-79-72269-1 doi:10.2759/14467 KK-06-17-006-EN-C
All what we do in life is connected with Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom: this is the most valuable human intangible asset because it encompasses the history, traditions, cultures, explicit and also more and more tacit knowledge, thanks also to social media. This sounds good, but such a so valuable asset and capital is very fragmented, lying unused in ‘cemeteries of information’ and is not used because it still lacks the structure, methods and instruments needed to filter and offer them in ways that brings tangible benefits to the users. The problems we are facing nowadays at global level are (i) the lack of interactive communication and a shared understanding that could make human knowledge and wisdom available internationally, as well as (ii) the ability to quickly identify the value, or non-value, of the enormous amount of data and information we are faced with. The more new technologies gather big data and large-scale information, the more we are confronted with our limited ability to distinguish between the essential, the necessary and the ‘nice-to-have’ elements of data and information.
