The Donar company was established in 1989 in Slovenia, as demand for office interior development was growing. Starting as a small business, Donar has developed into one of the key players in design furniture with the highest environmental standards.
On average, a European citizen produces half a ton of waste a year. This amounts to 2.5 billion tons yearly for the entire European Union.
The Joint Initiative on Circular Economy (JICE) is a partnership between the EU’s largest national promotional banks and institutions and the European Investment Bank to invest at least €10 billion in the circular economy by 2023.
It provides loans, equity investment, guarantees, innovative financing structures and technical assistance.
The initiative will support projects that prevent and eliminate waste, increase resource efficiency and promote circular business models. Eligible projects can be submitted to the respective JICE partners.
The City of Helsinki’s Roadmap for Circular and Sharing Economy is one of the 147 actions in the Carbon-neutral Helsinki 2035 Action Plan.
The roadmap includes the following four focuses:
The goals for each focus are set until 2035, with interim goals and supporting practical actions for each one.
Reducing plastic consumption and increasing the use of recycled plastic are among the main topics of the roadmap.
This roadmap is the result of debates in workshops with experts from both inside and outside the City. A team of representatives of the City’s Environmental Services coordinated the work.
This report analyses the scope of the plastic industry for the economy, the planet and society, as well as the policies at European and Spanish context to move towards a new plastic economy. Besides, the trade offs for companies are identified as key challenges.
Finally, the report shows the best practices of eleven companies from different sectors.
Stabilplastik is Europe's only manufacturer of zero waste 100 % recycled mix plastic pallets.
Re-think - Circular Economy Forum is an international event that brings together various actors operating at different levels in the Circular Economy fields who present a medium and long term vision on Circular Economy topics. The event will be online for the audience while the speakers and the main stakeholders will attend the event physically
Infinitdenim is specialised in the recycling of second-hand denim, rescued from its own city, Barcelona.
The European Association of Chemical Distributors (Fecc) acknowledges the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) and supports the initiative for a more sustainable approach by ensuring that used resources are kept in the EU economy for as long as possible.
However, on behalf of the European chemical distribution sector, particularly the numerous SMEs it represents, Fecc would like to raise the following points:
In 2019 the European Commission set out a policy guideline to address global environmental challenges and circularity. EURATEX and its members welcome the ambition of the EU Institutions to change the old way and commit to engage with all relevant parties to deliver and implement a new Textile Strategy to boost the circular economy and be fit for the present and future generations.
This strategy by EURATEX is a starting point, with insights into solutions based on a 14-month consultation with members, involving over 100 companies and key stakeholders, focused on applied circular practices and future opportunities. It prioritises removing barriers to a large-scale uptake of circular economy in textiles, sets out 12 key points and puts forward 38 proposals.
The Environmental Protection Agency has launched a challenge called 'Innovating a Circular Economy for soft plastic in Ireland' under Enterprise Ireland’s Small Business Innovation Research programme. The challenge focuses on reducing/eliminating soft plastic waste generated through the provision of school meals in Ireland.
In line with a circular economy strategy, the company Favini and chocolatiers Domori have developped an industrial symbiosis system to produce the ecological paper Crush Cocoa from cocoa processing waste.
Enrich manufactures organic compost in an open windrow system using source segregated green waste such as garden clippings and landscaping materials.
In 2016, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) set up a Symbiosis Users Network (SUN) to boost industrial symbiosis in Italy. The network promotes circular economy models through industrial symbiosis by focusing on operational issues.
SUN's 2019 conference was devoted to Good practices of industrial symbiosis in Italy and the contribution of regional policies as a strategic lever. The event, co-organised by SUN, Ecomondo and ENEA was held in Rimini (IT) on 7 November 2019 at Ecomondo - a leading event in Europe for new circular economy models.
Click on 2017 and 2019 to see the reports on SUN's two conferences.
Reports on ENEA-promoted conferences on industrial symbiosis are available here.
Based on a circular economic model that combines ecology and economy, b:bot is a machine and digital ecosystem for the collection of PET plastic bottles - with a real social and environmental impact.
CINDERELA invites you to this webinar on 14 July 2020 (9:30-11:30 CEST). The EU-funded project will present "CINDERELA One-Stop-Shop" (CinderOSS), its new digital platform for actors involved in chains for urban construction works with the use of secondary raw materials (SRM) recovered from local/regional waste streams.
From a “circular” point of view, the wide range of products considered to be "furniture" and the diverse use of materials in production (e.g. wood, plastics, textile, steel, glass, composites, foam) makes it a complex area to address.
The European Furniture Industries Confederation (EFIC) has drawn up a position paper that identifies challenges and opportunities linked to the circular economy transition, covering the different phases of manufacturing from supply of materials to the end-of-life phase, and that provides sector-specific expertise on EU Circular Economy policies.
The European furniture industries are ready to work together with EU institutions to create suitable tools for the sector, enabling it to move in the right direction.
Source: EFIC
Clariter is an international clean-tech company with a revolutionary chemical recycling (upcycling) technology that ends the life of plastic by transforming plastic waste into high-value industrial products: oils, waxes, and solvents.
The National Institute for Circular Economy (INEC) in France is launching the Circular Schools Programme (PEC), an operational project aimed at making schools a model for the circular economy.
The European Policy Centre’s (EPC) Task Force called Digital Roadmap to Circular Economy has explored the linkages between digitalisation and circular economy, the opportunities created by data and digitally-enabled solutions, and the challenges associated with harnessing their full potential for the transition to a circular economy.
The project represents a pioneering endeavour in exploring the interconnections between the digital and green transformations and considers the implications for EU policymaking.
The final publication The circular economy: Going digital and its executive summary show that digitalisation can offer enormous possibilities for the transition to a more sustainable, circular economy but it is essential to steer it in the right direction.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA) has always been a meeting place for Sweden’s future. It builds bridges between the business community, the public sector, academia and the political sphere.
Its two-year project "Resource Effectiveness and the Circular Economy" was aimed at making Sweden more competitive in a future with finite resources, in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, by economising on resources and developing new technologies, services and business models in five areas:
Read the synthesis report, marking the completion of the project, which presents the most important conclusions, recommendations and action plans from the five subprojects.
The annual European Week for Waste Reduction Awards Ceremony is organised online on 25 June at 14:00 CEST to reward the most outstanding waste prevention initiatives carried out during the last edition.
The Dutch economy is 24.5% circular. Measures in four key sectors can triple the national circularity rate and help the government achieve its ambitions for a fully circular economy by 2050.
On 3 June, Circle Economy launched the Circularity Gap Report for the Netherlands. The report shows that the Netherlands is a circular frontrunner: the country's circularity rate is three times higher than the global rate of 8.6%. Consuming 221 million tonnes of materials each year, the Netherlands retrieves one quarter from non-virgin, secondary sources. However, if the government is to achieve its ambitions of full circularity by 2050, a major overhaul of the national economy, including jobs, will still be necessary.
In response to increasing demand for online training, AIMPLAS has prepared 4 free webinars on themes related to plastics: solutions in the medical sector, new recycling technologies, quality control in the automotive industry and reduction of CO2 emissions.
Launched in November 2019, Sporos aims to become the first platform for impact investment and collaboration that adds value to SMEs in Greece and Southeastern Europe, on the basis of the Circular Economy.
Sporos utilises mezzanine sustainable financing tools, combined with consultancy services and environmental, social and governance (ESG) and sustainable development goal (SDG) metrics.
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 webinar series organised by Tondo represents an opportunity for companies, start-ups and experts from all over the world to have a clearer overview of the status of the circular economy and how it can enhance innovative business models and concepts with lower environmental impacts.This third session will continue to focus on circular cities around the world, in this specific case Rotterdam.
After three years of hard work, the URBANREC project has been brought to a successful completion. The main outcomes of the project include a comprehensive guide on bulky waste management, the implementation of demonstration activities on innovative practices for the re-use, collection and treatment of urban bulky waste, as well as knowledge transfer activities.
