This report describes innovation competition as a method of tackling major environmental challenges, specifically how to provide food sustainably and resource-efficiently in the future.

Two teams with expertise in plastics, logistics and sustainability developed solutions focused on a more regional food supply enabling us to reduce the amount of plastic, packaging and transport used. The winning submission is a conversion tool describing the principles of sustainable production and consumption of food.

This reflection paper explains how materials will enable solutions for a healthy, safe, resilient society and stronger economy to answer citizen demands. It includes strategic research agendas (SRAs), proposals, solutions, and recommendations of Alliance for Materials A4M community towards Horizon Europe in the post-COVID scenario. COVID-19 has affected the development of current strategies to face societal challenges and led to a reflection on a new global economic model where circular economy will play a prominent role.

The paper puts forward proposals for strategic research and innovation activities to the European Commission, Member States, and the European Parliament, taking into account the objectives of the Green Deal Priorities and Recovery Plan.

The brochure "From Linear to Circular in the Textile and Apparel Industries - Let’s make the circular shift together" aims to give a push towards a circular textile industry. Circular economy strategies and business models have the potential to offer solutions for the textile industry:

• use renewable sources
• phase out dangerous substances
• increase utilisation and
• radically improve reuse and recycling.

The brochure highlights Dutch circular frontrunners that make a change - just a fraction of the initiatives, organisations and technologies available. Only the most inspiring examples have been selected, with a potential to be upscaled and implemented in other parts of the world, hoping that they will also inspire and encourage others to collaborate and make a change.

Textiles and clothing play an important role in our everyday life. But the global fashion industry model is unsustainable. It uses large amounts of resources and has negative impacts on the environment and people. The global fashion industry, therefore, has to make a transition towards a circular model. In a ‘circular’ fashion economy, clothes, textiles, and fibres are kept at their highest value during use and re-enter the economy to avoid becoming waste.

This research note produced by Ecopreneur.eu is a first inventory of the potential impacts of future EU circular fashion on non-European textile producing countries. It uses existing literature and input from four circular economy experts to analyse the economic, social and environmental impacts. 

Plastics represent a serious waste-handling problem with only 10% of the plastic waste generated worldwide being recycled. Plastics recycling is instrumental to close the loop of the circular economy by re-introducing into the economy high-quality plastic recyclates incorporated into new products.

The brochure highlights the importance of moving towards a circular economy for plastics in Europe. It identifies the most commonly used types of plastics and describes the current state-of-play, challenges faced by the European mechanical plastics recycling industry and key recommendations for overcoming them. Plastics recycling’s environmental benefits and economic importance are also touched upon.

The coronavirus crisis has disastrous human and economic consequences, revealing our system's exposure to a variety of risks. As the pandemic forces us to adapt our daily lives in ways we would not have imagined, it is also challenging us to rethink the systems that underpin the economy.

While addressing public health consequences is clearly the priority, before the crisis, momentum had already been increasing around the need for a system reset, and the potential of a circular model.

Far from the pandemic pushing the circular economy agenda to the bottom of the list, this article by Jocelyn Blériot at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation highlights and reiterates that it is now more relevant than ever, and sets out to explore the wider possibilities for recovery.

SCALER provides mechanisms to accelerate the journey towards efficient and quick implementation of industrial symbiosis in the European process industry. They do this by developing action plans and adapted solutions to industrial stakeholders and communities.

SCALER works closely with a wide range of stakeholders including industrial networks, consultancies, researchers and policy makers at various geographic and political levels, to deliver practical tools and guidelines for industry actors engaging in resource efficiency, reuse and sharing.

To achieve this goal, SCALER is developing a set of reports and guides. They offer insights into how businesses can start industrial resource synergies with other companies to minimise their waste and create more value from their production.