BIOEAST has issued a Stakeholder Manifesto on “Sustainable supply chains and strengthened local processing of bioresources in Central and Eastern Europe”. They are calling for signatures from individuals and organisations, both within the Central-Eastern Europe macro-region and beyond.
The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission has just published a report on construction & demolition waste (CDW) which confirms that the circular economy is crucial for reaching climate neutrality by 2050:
- construction & demolition waste accounts for almost 40% of all waste generated in the EU
- the new JRC study estimates the potential for recycling and preparing for re-use of CDW to be roughly 83%
- realising this potential would lead to an additional 33 Mt CO2e savings annually (equivalent to the combined annual emissions of e.g. Estonia, Latvia and Luxembourg).
The European Commission is taking important legislative and non-legislative steps to ensure CDW is managed in an environmentally sound manner and contributes to the circular economy.
The workshops on Nutrient recycling policy will be held by the European Sustainable Phosphorus Platform in Brussels and online on 12-14 March 2024.
Objectives:
To elaborate ambitious, feasible and consensus proposals for regulatory targets for phosphorus and nitrogen reuse-recycling from municipal wastewater and
To identify policy tools to support market pull for recycled nutrients which could achieve consensus across industry and users.
The 4th International Conference on Strategies toward Green Deal Implementation – Water, Raw Materials & Energy (ICGreenDeal2023) will take place on 14-15 December. It will tackle climate change and ways to prevent it, including innovative solutions (technological, environmental, economic and social) that can be implemented under the Green Deal Strategies.
Global biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate, giving rise to a sixth mass extinction and constituting one of the core challenges of the triple planetary crisis. Biodiversity forms the foundation of life on Earth and its loss presents a systemic risk to future human survival. To reverse the biodiversity crisis, transformative systems-wide change is required.
This paper addresses an existing research gap by exploring whether the circular economy can play a role not only in halting biodiversity loss but also in regenerating it and thereby contributing to a nature-positive future. To unlock the regenerative potential of the circular economy, a coherent strategy is needed that provides incentives for all actors, notably policymakers and businesses.
This Sitra memorandum focuses on providing building blocks to help the next European Commission address the ecological crisis while maintaining Europe's competitiveness and resilience.
The renewed European Commission will take office in 2024 and must keep up the European Green Deal, ensuring that it centres on nature and mainstreams the circular economy across the EU single market.
The key recommendations include:
ecosystem accounting
biodiversity offsets
circular single market
leveraging nature as a business opportunity
using data for the green transition
addressing Europe's global biodiversity footprint, and
reforming the common agricultural policy.
Stakeholders are encouraged to contribute to the ongoing debate, ensuring the strategy's success.
The GO-GRASS project is organising a partner event on 8 June, during EU Green Week 2023. It will explore new circular business models and skills that can enhance the resilience of rural communities, focusing on green biorefineries, funding instruments and good practices in the context of grassland opportunities.
The World Circular Economy Forum 2023 will be held in Helsinki from 30 May to 2 June 2023. This global collaboration forum is co-organised by Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra and Nordic Innovation, with international partners. It will attract more than 2 000 leading circular economy players in the world to Finland to find circular solutions that can help our economies fit within the boundaries of nature. Part of the programme will also be accessible online.
The Circular Navarre Catalogue 2022 is an update of the showcasing booklet published in 2020 and in 2021. This new edition includes 50 organisations - based on circular business models - in the Spanish Navarre region, looking for international cooperation.
The World Circular Economy Forum 2022 presents circular economy game-changers. Hosted in Kigali and online on 6-8 December 2022, WCEF2022 is co-organised by the African Circular Economy Alliance, the Republic of Rwanda, the African Circular Economy Network (ACEN) and The Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, with international partners. The title for this year's event is 'From Africa to the World'.