This Circular Procurement toolkit outlines how businesses can redesign their procurement processes for greater ‘circularity’. This means maximising the value of products and materials while in use and recovering and repurposing them at the end of their lives, eliminating waste. This toolkit contains six simple steps for any business beginning their circular procurement journey.
A team of researchers from the research centre CIEPQPF and the CFE of the University of Coimbra has developed an innovative application for recovered waste from walnut fruit: compounds with a “nematocidal” effect have been extracted that can control plant-parasitic nematodes affecting a wide range of species.
SEAclic is a project developed by the German company Storopack, which has created a packaging technology suitable for temperature-sensitive food products, such as fish. The bio-based version of the Storopack SEAclic Box is made from a new, compostable plastic.
The City of Helsinki has coordinated a project on the reuse of excavated soil in construction projects across the city. This project consists of improving coordination of how and where excavated soil is used.
The Danube Goes Circular is a platform set up under the Interreg MOVECO project which ran from December 2016 to August 2019. The platform aims to promote awareness of and engagement in the circular economy, and involves sixteen partners from the ten Danube countries.
There is a marketplace for reusable materials, designed to match up supply and demand for waste and reusable materials and products meet in order to foster eco-innovation in the Danube region.
The platform provides information on how to extend a product’s useful lifecycle as well as on legal requirements and corporate good practices linked to the promotion of the circular economy. The toolbox section includes fact sheets for SMEs.
The Dutch company KarTent has come up with a sustainable solution for the many tents left behind by music festival goers: a cardboard tent, designed to be purchased and transported in bulk to festival sites. After the festival, the company arranges for the tents to be removed and recycled.
Sopköket is a Swedish restaurant and catering company founded in 20215. It prepares meals which partly incorporate rescued and surplus food from supermarkets and other companies. Their goal is to reduce food waste.
Zona Urbana is a fashion company based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Since 2004, it designs and manufactures products with recycled materials, mainly bags or wallets.
Last Minute Market is a social enterprise, founded in 1998 as a research initiative and now a spin-off from the University of Bologna. Today, it is an entrepreneurial society working at the national level in Italy, developing local projects to recover unsold goods and benefit non-profit organisations. Its objective is zero waste.
