Join this webinar to learn about the relevance of Circular Economy for cities, the role and approaches of EU regulation, as well as specific opportunities/challenges that municipalities may face when “going circular”.
It replaces the postponed NetWorkshop on Circular Cities>Towns>Villages and Municipal Utilities due to take place on 1-2 April.
In 2018, the City of Antwerp kick-started the Circular South project. The aim is to encourage more efficient use of energy, water, waste and materials by the citizens of the New South district of Antwerp through an innovative community-driven approach.
Le concours Design Zéro Déchet invite depuis 2012 les étudiants et jeunes diplômés en design, sciences de l’environnement, ingénierie et arts appliqués à réfléchir sur le sujet de l’écoconception et de la prévention des déchets à travers l’élaboration de biens ou services innovants et durables.
Interreg Europe project REPLACE launches its 2nd Public Event State of the art of circular economy across governance levels hosted by Lazio Region in Rome on 6 March 2020.
Cities can play a pivotal role in creating an enabling environment through regulations and incentives, but the private sector needs to collaborate and explore the cross-sectoral synergies required to achieve a circular model. There are immense opportunities for public-private collaboration in achieving goals that might not otherwise be possible for cities to accomplish alone.
Cities are embedding circular thinking in their utility processes, placing the onus on the private sector to come up with new business models that are both economically viable and ecologically sustainable. This could potentially result in a situation whereby circular products and services become the new market standard.
The first REPLACE Learning Event and circularity tour will be hosted by Frysland Province in Leeuwarden (NL) on 3rd and 4th December 2019.
ISWA will hold its 29th World Congress will be held in Bilbao, Spain from 7 to 9 October 2019
EURACTIV will host a high-level Stakeholder Workshop on 4 December 2019 to discuss the EU’s circular economy policy, its current challenges and its future steps.
In a continued effort to reduce Europe's carbon footprint and to lower energy bills for European consumers, the European Commission has adopted new eco-design measures on 1 October for products such as refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers and televisions.
Over the past couple of years, as companies start to understand the opportunities that lie under the concept of circular economy, the circularity conversation has gained significant momentum. At the same time, national and regional governments are developing frameworks and regulations to promote the circular economy.
Effective policymaking is crucial to accelerate and scale up circular actions in the economy. It supports businesses in overcoming hurdles by stimulating innovative projects and long-term investments in circularity, facilitating collaboration and partnerships, and producing tangible results.
Learning from successful policies can help inform future policies to promote wider actions in other sectors and regions over time.
By highlighting some representative pioneers in circular economy policy, exploring key enablers from these policies, describing how other regions could replicate these enablers and providing recommendations, this publication aims to provide insights from the policy perspective and to feed into the ongoing development of other initiatives and policies related to the circular economy globally.
The Roman public transport provider, Atac, has launched +Ricicli +Viaggi (the more you recycle, the more you travel), a pilot scheme in which riders can pay for travel with PET plastic bottles.
Public authorities will soon be encouraged to apply the Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) approach to their policies thanks to a new Interreg Europe project, LCA4Regions. The 9 project partners met for the first time in Brussels, on 30 September and 1 October 2019, the with support of ACR+.
From shoemaker to wind energy park engineer: 7.5% of all jobs in Belgium are circular, shows new analysis by the King Baudouin Foundation and Circle Economy. The baseline measurement of employment in the Belgian circular economy provides insights into the nature and number of jobs in the country’s circular economy.
Through the Brussels Regional Programme for a Circular Economy, the government of the Brussels-Capital Region has defined a framework to encourage the transformation of a linear economy (extract – produce – consume – dispose) into a circular economy (recover – produce – consume – reuse) within Brussels.
The be circular portal is the entry point to the BRPCE, and networks the regional government with businesses and civil society delivering change on the ground, while also providing information to entrepreneurs about the various direct and indirect support programmes available.
Its projects include the Annual General Meeting linking more than 300 Brussels and European participants, and yearly Prizes for Circular Entrepreneurship. In 2017, be circular supported 222 entrepreneurs and financed 139 projects. A year later, the programme had reached nearly 1,300 businesses.
be circular also collects good practices from the Brussels region, with a particular focus on its four priority sectors: construction, logistics, retail and waste management.
The 3rd international PLATE conference (Product Lifetimes and the Environment) will address product lifetimes in the context of sustainability, and is hosted by TU Berlin and Fraunhofer IZM from 18 to 20 September 2019
On 10 October 2019, the Interreg Project REPLACE (REgional PoLicy Actions for Circular Economy) and European Economic and Social Committee will host a side event of the European Week of Regions and Cities on how regional authorities can make use of the SCREEN framework in their circular economy policy instruments.
A coalition of 30+ business, environmental and social associations calls for an ambitious and comprehensive Circular Economy Bill in Scotland.
The Ecopreneur.eu landscape review of circular economy policy in the EU Member States aims to inspire these countries to accelerate their circular transition. Combining the EU's Monitoring Framework with other rankings, databases and reports, Ecopreneur presents 28 country profiles using a mix of quantitative data and qualitative information to highlight specific indicators. These range from waste generated per capita to voting behaviour on EU proposals on the circular economy.
The report also describes the current performance, initiatives, most relevant organisations, policies, challenges and examples of good practice for each Member State. The country profiles show 28 unique different trajectories towards the circular economy. Some countries and regions, such as the Netherlands, Scotland, Slovenia, France, Belgium and Finland, are already leading the way. Each country profile concludes with Ecopreneur’s recommendations, with the following overarching key messages for all EU Member States:
Ecopreneur.eu has created an overview of circular economy policy for all EU Member States, which reveals 28 different paths with inspiring best practices. Countries that lead the way typically have the highest waste production as well.
ACR+, the Association of Cities and Regions for Sustainable Resource Management, celebrated its 25th anniversary in June 2019. At this event, member organisations presented their respective work on the circular economy and committed to continue furthering the circular transition.
ACR+ has made substantial contributions to developing monitoring systems with corresponding indicator sets for urban and regional authorities wanting to accelerate their circular transition. Among others, ACR+ has continued its Circular Europe Network projects within the Urban Agenda Partnership on Circular Economy, while also contributing to the CIRCTER final report on sub-national circular economy monitoring.
Following a 19 February 2019 workshop on Circular Economy Competences - Making the Case for Lifelong Learning in the European Parliament, ACR+ and Zero Waste Scotland have produced a report detailing how to introduce circular thinking in education, create vocational training programmes to upskill workers in waste management, repair and reuse, and facilitate the circular transition by developing training programs for local authority staff.
The Circular Economy Competences, Making the Case for Lifelong Learning report, published by ACR+ and Zero Waste Scotland , builds on the workshop these orgnisations hosted in the Euroepan Parliament on 19 February 2019. It gathers the experiences participants shared in that workshop, and is meant to help educators, policymakers and managers of NGOs involved in training and educational organisations to promote the development of local circular economy loops.
The three chapters of this booklet cover different areas of the lifelong learning landscape:
ACR+ has consistently advocated to accelerate the circular economy, while also showcasing urban best practice in circular economy throughout 2019 at various events across the European continent.
