The EU-funded OLEAF4VALUE project has set up a consortium of highly experienced partners to develop a valorisation system for the olive leaves biomass. The consortium will address all levels of the value chain: raw material, biorefining, post-extraction technologies, market validation and sustainability assessment.
The BioSupPack project aims to deliver novel, cost-competitive and versatile bio-based packaging solutions - based on PHA - that demonstrate high-performance for the packaging of food, cosmetics, homecare and beverage products as well as no environmental damage during & after their use.
The slow flower movement is growing in Europe and aims to provide local, seasonal and organic flowers. Why? Because the international flower industry is very harmful to nature and has major negative impacts in developing countries.
Under the framework of the INSIGHT project, a Blueprint has been developed to provide specific recommendations on how to promote the application of Industrial Symbiosis and its facilitation to various stakeholders, as well as a roadmap of how the organisations are expected to apply the IS principles, by making use of educational specific inputs and resources.
The project, funded under Horizon 2020, aims to develop a systemic circular approach to floor coverings.
ReCreate pushes towards circular construction by investigating the system changes needed in the whole ecosystems of construction and demolition.
The Italian Cartiera is an ethical fashion workshop founded in Lama di Reno, Marzabotto in 2017 which makes leather and fabric items.
Believing strongly that work is an extraordinary tool for social inclusion, Cartiera offers paths for employment and integration of disadvantaged people, mainly refugees and asylum seekers.
AIMPLAS, the Plastics Technology Centre, has now completed the fourth and final year of the RepescaPlas project. The project has developed a complete management system for plastic waste recovered from the sea and subsequent recycling into products of commercial value.
Clear Fashion, independant expert of garment evaluation, is a solution that informs consumers on brands' practices and clothes' impact, and enables fashion brands to communicate their scores, in order to bring more transparency in the fashion industry.
The PUCO2 project, led by AIDIMME, AIMPLAS and INESCOP, uses research and development to combat global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Seventeen companies have taken part in the project, which will also be relevant to producers of adhesives for related sectors, as well as the textile, automotive and toy industries.
In 2017, Poland was the third most carbon–intensive economy in Europe. The five main contributing sectors are power, industry, the built environment (mainly heating), agrifood and transport.
Poland is home to 33 out of 50 cities with the highest air quality concerns in the EU, according to the WHO. The two major sources of pollutants are motor vehicles and the burning of coal in domestic solid fuel furnaces.
Recent action by Poland's cities, governments, and local communities indicate that change is sought after. The acceptance of the circular economy roadmap at the national level in 2018 and city development strategies emphasize readiness for a transition towards a circular economy. This transition could help tackle some of the country's greatest social and environmental challenges.
Each year, humanity consumes resources equivalent to 1.7 planets. Sustainable resource use is therefore essential if we are to achieve our national environmental and climate objectives and the sustainable global development goals in the 2030 Agenda.
RE:Source is a strategic innovation programme co-funded by the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems (Vinnova), the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (Formas) and the Swedish Energy Agency. The programme focuses on research and innovation in sustainable material use.
Within RE:Source, the RE:Agenda describes the innovation area of sustainable use of resources, which aims to support solutions that contribute to the efficient use of the earth’s resources within the planetary boundaries.
The Whole of Government Circular Economy Strategy is Ireland’s first national circular economy strategy. The Strategy is a key addition to the Government’s drive to achieve a 51% reduction in overall greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and to get on a path to reach net-zero emissions by no later than 2050, as per commitments in the Programme for Government and the Climate Act 2021.
The Strategy explains what the circular economy is, why Ireland needs to deliver on a circular economy and how national policy will develop to support that goal. A circular economy can have positive environmental, economic and social impacts, such as reduced plastic pollution, new jobs and better quality, longer lasting consumer products.
The Madeira Circular Agenda bolsters the position of the Autonomous Region of Madeira (RAM) as a circular economy hotspot.
It involves civil society and public and private entities in a system that seeks to keep materials in the economy, and to promote efficiency, circularity and sustainability as competitiveness and differentiation factors for the regional economy. The Agenda also aims to ensure that RAM companies act as circular economy leaders in their respective sectors, adopting best practices and creating innovative solutions based on circularity principles, particularly in sectors deemed critical for the region, namely agri-food, construction, tourism, social sector and the sea.
Within the framework of the Circular Economy Initiative Deutschland (CEID) and its three interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral working groups, more than 130 experts from industry, science and civil society have summed up their findings in the Circular Economy (CE) Roadmap for Germany, which consists of a consolidated opinion addressing society as a whole.
This Roadmap, which has focused - right from the beginning - on shaping a consistent and common target vision for a circular economy in 2030, is a scientifically-based framework for action that systemically describes the necessary steps for Germany to transition to a CE and provides decision-makers from politics, industry and science with concrete recommendations for action.
In 2018 the City of Turku set the following target: becoming carbon neutral by 2029, in time for its 800th anniversary.
Finland's oldest city, Turku is a forerunner in circular innovations in the water, textiles and chemicals sectors, among others. A vibrant community of researchers and business actors, along with numerous public and private initiatives, already contribute to scale up circularity in the Turku region.
The Circular Turku roadmap is about creating the right conditions for a circular transition in the region. The city can support this transition through different levers such as local regulations, urban planning and infrastructure development.
Turku wants to promote a fair and inclusive circular transformation of economic systems that benefits all city residents.
This model reinforces Wallonia's objective of renewing its industry and will ensure that the region is better able to cope with future crises.
The strategy will achieve this by fully integrating the alterations and adaptations required by climate change, and by making Wallonia more independent in terms of resources and global supply chains.
Wallonia’s vision is based on the following guidelines:
Particular attention is paid to the six value chains: Construction, Plastics, Food, Water, Textiles and Metallurgy
The Intermunicipal Community of the Tâmega e Sousa is a public entity composed of 11 municipalities in Northern Portugal. It has developed a circular project aiming to enhance circular economy achievements and green transition agendas within local authorities, municipal companies and intermunicipal entities. In this regard, it has created the manual Economia Circular nas Compras Públicas on circular economy in public procurement to assist municipalities.
The manual presents an in-depth mapping of circular economy practices for a Portuguese strategy for ecological public procurement, as well as indications on how to address the circular economy challenge, with a range of criteria and procedures for public procurement.
The Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg is a frontrunner in many economic sectors, including finance, construction, data-driven innovation and space resources.
In recent years, the country has sought to position itself as a hotspot for the circular economy (CE) and many ongoing public and private initiatives support this claim.
Based on these fruitful experiences and the recognition of the CE as a high priority by the Luxembourg government, which has made it a major feature of the 2018-2023 Government agreement, the current strategy aims to take the CE in Luxembourg to the next level. It identifies proven regulatory, financial and information management methods and tools for boosting circular initiatives, and proposes a methodology for using them in a number of key economic sectors.
Circular Gothenburg focuses on resource efficiency to reduce climate change and achieve circular material flows.
It has three target groups: citizens, city departments and businesses. For all three target groups, the goal is to make it simple, straightforward and attractive to participate in transformational circular work. This includes the municipality’s in-house processes and activities which help people to live in a more circular way. One of these activities is the Fixotek: staffed facilities, close to where people live and open to everyone, where people can meet, learn, repair and redesign products, borrow tools and swap toys, clothes and books.
Ireland is at a turning point for the transition to a circular economy (CE). The 2022 Whole of Government Circular Economy Strategy provides the policy framework for the CE in this country, and the forthcoming Circular Economy Bill is expected to strengthen waste and CE legislation.
Nevertheless, with a circularity material use rate of 2% in 2020, Ireland shows significant scope for progress. This report analyses the state of play and challenges of the circular transition in Ireland and provides policy recommendations for CE policy across levels of government. It is the result of a two-year policy dialogue between the OECD, the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, as well as a broad range of public, private and civil society stakeholders.
The goal of this study was to investigate the feasibility for Smart Integrated Decentralised Energy (SIDE) systems to contribute to the resilience, flexibility and circularity of the Dutch national power system infrastructure. The energy sector plays a crucial role in tackling the challenge of transitioning into a circular, renewable energy-based economy. For this reason, the Dutch government has decided to quintuple renewable power generation by 2030.
Thanks to recent developments in renewable energy technologies such as batteries, heat pumps and solar panels, but also biodigesters in which organic waste and black water are collected providing an alternative heating source, it is now possible to produce, convert and store energy locally within so-called microgrids.
Russia is among the larger suppliers of raw materials to the EU. It is the biggest world supplier for palladium, platinum and nickel, and a prominent one for aluminium and copper. The country still holds large untapped reserves of rare-earth elements.
This paper provides an overview of EU import dependency on raw materials and Russia’s share among EU sources of key supplies for low-carbon technologies. It then looks at prospects for meeting future material demands through circularity for three technologies, namely lithium-ion batteries, wind turbines and fuel cell electric vehicles.
The analysis is based on two scenarios with different levels of ambition. They aim to give an indication of the scale of potential benefits that can be achieved through circular approaches.
This research project lists ecodesign criteria for circular fashion and textiles.
It focused on giving consumer textiles a longer lifespan with optimal reuse potential, making disassembly and recovery possible, and exploring upcycling and high-quality recycling. Extending the life of textile products turned out to have the greatest impact in the short term. Quality seems to be the most impactful ecodesign criterion when it comes to improving the sustainability and circularity of consumer textiles as quickly as possible.
The project defined seven product categories, identifying a set of minimum criteria for each. The report looks at existing labels, standards and regulations and the authors hope it will help expand the Ecodesign Directive by adding a textile category.
This report, prepared by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, provides an analysis of the Dutch procurement system.
The Dutch Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) approach embraces six themes, two of which are explored in this study: climate-neutral procurement and circular procurement. Included in these two themes are aspects such as CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the reuse of raw materials at the highest possible level of value. SPP is a highly topical issue for a steadily growing number of organisations in the Netherlands: action plans are being written, requirements and criteria are being formulated, and tools are being produced. Together, these activities are creating growing demand for instruments that evidence the impact of SPP.
Many actors see the EU’s circular economy (CE) as a promising narrative which steps outside dominant end-of-pipe solutions towards an encompassing vision for strategies across the supply chain. However, this study finds that the EU CE Action Plan maintains the status quo narrative instead of suggesting radical changes.
By focusing on stakeholder narratives, this analysis shows that the inertia is primarily due to CE proponents’ self-perception of being in a legitimacy crisis and their strategic arguments that have:
The paper discusses how to develop new environmental narratives outside the status quo.
Longstanding research on wood cascading has identified a variety of factors to enable more efficient, circular use of forest-based products in Europe.
This paper finds that two of the most critical barriers to wood cascading are:
It makes the following recommendations for policies and business:
France's Law Against Food Waste has become an international model for sustainable food policy. The law is often described as combining economic efficiency with environmental protection and social equity. However, stakeholder narratives cast doubt on whether this French CE law really contributes to social justice in the long run. This discourse analysis shows that:
Urban agriculture comes with its own share of environmental impacts. Circular strategies promise to reduce these impacts, but not all strategies are resource efficient and environmentally effective.
This paper finds that the most eco-friendly and circular strategies for urban agriculture, taking a Mediterranean tomato crop as a case study, include:
Policies are focusing on halving food waste to help conserve increasingly strained food resources. However, expanding their scope of action to include dietary changes and complement targets with resource footprints has greater potential to save resources while avoiding trade-offs.
This paper shows that in Germany:
Resourceful Cities is an URBACT Action Planning Network of European cities that want to develop next-generation urban resource centres to accelerate the transition to the circular economy. The idea for this network arose from one of the actions identified by the Urban Agenda Partnership on Circular Economy under its ‘better knowledge’ pillar - namely to promote Urban Resource Centres for waste prevention, re-use and recycling.
Broadly these centres serve as connection points for citizens, new businesses, researchers, and the public sector to co-create new ways of closing local resource loops, while promoting waste prevention, re-use, repair, and recycling. Their precise manifestation will differ from city to city in response to the local context and needs identified.
WaVa / Waste Valorisation is a chemical exchange platform for all professionals which promotes the circular economy among manufacturers. Specifically, it is a co-product marketplace where sellers can sell their waste as a secondary raw material and buyers can buy cheaper, local materials.
Any industrial raw material, waste, by-product or manufacturing co-product can be traded on the WaVa platform. It aims to help people achieve their circular economy objectives and thus reap the economic and environmental benefits.
WaVa is not recognised as a waste disposal facility; it simply connects buyers and sellers. It never actually takes ownership of the product.
There are no fees for registration, selling or buying.
The HOOP Network of Cities and Regions seeks to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and mutual learning among cities and regions willing to recover valuable resources from urban bio-waste and wastewater to make bio-based products. By joining the network, they gain information on innovative urban bioeconomy solutions and engage in activities relevant to their specific situation and interests. Participants have direct exchanges with the eight HOOP lighthouse cities and regions, sharing experiences and expertise, and can be invited to the project's events.
The HOOP network is only open to organisations that plan, organise or operate municipal waste management or wastewater treatment activities, for instance local or regional authorities and waste management companies.
TCO Certified has 30 years' experience of driving sustainable development in the IT industry. By continuously developing criteria and verification methods, TCO Certified tackles new challenges such as circularity, hazardous substances, and socially and environmentally responsible manufacturing.
All criteria are mandatory, which means that all products must meet all the criteria for their product category to be certified according to TCO Certified.
The need to go circular has become especially pressing as digitalisation continues to grow and with it the consumption of electronic devices. TCO Certified’s circular criteria help purchasers lower greenhouse gas emissions, reduce e-waste and extend the life of IT products.
The catalogue of best practices in circular economy (CBPCE) is a Spanish meeting forum for the production, public, education and training sectors allowing the exchange of good practices and putting in contact different entities - suppliers and customers - who operate according to the same circular economy criteria, in order to create a network that strengthens circular value chains.
In addition, the CBPCE promotes sectoral and intersectoral connections by showcasing success stories that can be scalable and transferable between companies and sectors, thus facilitating circular growth in the economy as a whole. The call for this second CBPEC was made during 2021 and 46 circular economy practices were selected and made available to companies and the general public.
The Circular Appliances website, an initiative powered by APPLiA - Home Appliance Europe representing home appliance manufacturers from across Europe, is an online platform which takes readers through each phase of the home appliances’ lifecycle, from design to end-of-use, aimed at displaying the achievements of the sector and fostering a more sustainable culture among European citizens.
Thanks to an immersive and interactive format, the Circular Appliances website offers the public a comprehensive experience to discover each phase of the product’s lifecycle and how the home appliance industry drives the circular transition. This is all based on what APPLiA calls a “circular culture”, which means bringing all societal actors together to achieve more ambitious circularity objectives.
Recovo is a B2B platform located in Spain which specialises in selling on deadstock fabric which would otherwise be classified as textile waste.
The platform helps EU-based brands and suppliers to give a second life to unused fabric: this reduces the amount of resources needed to meet buyers' needs and cuts down on the amount of waste to be processed. The platform uploads photos and information on fabric remnants put up for sale by producers which can then earn money from products rather than paying for waste disposal. Buyers can order samples, then buy as much of the fabric as they want which is delivered straight to them.
A user-friendly platform promoting circularity and combating waste!
The Incubation Forum for Circular Economy in European Defence (IF CEED) aims to apply the circularity approach of the EU Green Deal to European defence by engaging a cooperative community, including EU defence ministries, industry, institutes, research centres, financial institutions, academia and other bodies at national and international level.
Nine working groups called "Project Circles" cover the following themes:
Based on circular economy principles, the key goal of IF CEED is to incubate collaborative projects and their respective consortia.
Nir-vana is an open innovation platform where innovators can find the right opportunity and develop their innovation ecosystem. It offers everything one needs to grow one's innovation ecosystem.
Circular economy (CE) projects are obviously part of the content of the Nir-vana platform, since CE is a key to sustainability. Many of the projects are uploaded to the platform by users and others are embedded from other sources such as the Enterprise Europe Network. Nir-vana is also open to connect with other sources of CE proposals.
Participants to the platform can share their valuable ideas with agents outside their company and seek collaboration with others to carry out innovative projects - whether they are part of a company or a freelance professional, an entity or researcher.
SmartProSys is a research initiative for sustainable chemistry and circular economy at the Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany (contact).
It aims to transform the linear, fossil-based process chain of the chemical industry into a sustainable, fully closed and energy-efficient cycle.
The chemical recycling process is a complex, multi-layered process with numerous components. However, this cycle should result in a final product that is dynamic, flexible, and adaptable to the environment.
At Zero Waste Europe (ZWE), Larissa Copello is the Consumption and Production Campaigner working on upstream solutions for packaging and single-use plastic products, such as waste-free business models and reuse systems.
Zero Waste Europe (ZWE) is the European network of communities, local leaders, experts and change agents working towards the elimination of waste in our society. ZWE advocates for sustainable systems and the redesign of our relationship with resources to accelerate a just transition towards zero waste for the benefit of people and the planet.
ZWE is also part of Rethink Plastic, an alliance of +10 European NGOs working with European policy-makers to design and deliver policy solutions to tackle plastic pollution, in which Larissa Copello follows policy developments on single-use plastic and packaging.
Guido Lena (Italian – 1965) was Director for Environmental Affairs in UEAPME from 1999 to 2008, when he was appointed Director for Sustainable Development, extending his competences to EU energy and climate change policies. His experience covers the challenges and opportunities of sustainability applied to SMEs. In this role, he has represented his organisation in several consultative committees set up by the EU Commission and worked as both sherpa in high-level groups set up by the EU Commission and as expert for the EESC. Due to the recent name change of his organisation, he has been Sustainable Development Director in SMEunited since November 2018.
SMEunited, formerly known as UEAPME, is the association of crafts and SMEs in Europe with around 70 member organisations from over 30 European countries. SMEunited is a recognised employers’ organisation and European social partner and acts on behalf of crafts and SMEs in European social dialogue and in discussions with the EU institutions. SMEunited represents national cross-sectoral craft and SME federations, European SME branch organisations and associate members. It speaks on behalf of the 24 million SMEs in Europe which employ almost 95 million people. It is a non-profit seeking and non-partisan organisation.
Dr Sarah Miller is Chief Executive of the Rediscovery Centre, Ireland's National Centre for the Circular Economy. Since 2005, Sarah has overseen the development of the centre as an ecological centre of excellence and an innovation hub for the circular economy in Ireland. Sarah has a keen interest in research and holds a PhD in Environmental Science, a Master’s in Business Administration and an Honours Degree in Biotechnology.
Based in Dublin, but operating on a national basis, the Rediscovery Centre is a creative movement connecting people, ideas and resources to support the circular economy and sustainable, low-carbon living. The centre’s work is built around the three key themes of education, demonstration and advocacy. To support the transition to a circular economy in Ireland, the centre provides training, education and events that inspire active participation and citizen engagement.
The visitor centre demonstrates good practice through social enterprise excellence, a reuse retail collective and onsite circular economy programmes and showcases. Working in partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency, the centre also runs the national Circular Economy Academy, a free mentoring and support programme to assist social enterprises and community organisations embrace circularity. In collaboration with the Irish government, regional and city authorities, NGOs, academic institutions and corporate partners, the Rediscovery Centre’s education, research and policy team coordinate action-based programmes which drive change and support the circular economy in Ireland.
Alberto Arroyo Schnell is responsible for policy and programmes at the European Regional Office of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). He has held leading positions on EU environmental policy for the past 15 years. His current focus is working together with the key sectors related to / impacted by / benefiting from biodiversity and nature, aiming to find ways to achieve the environmental targets jointly and to ensure ownership of these targets by all stakeholders. He is Spanish, with a background in Forestry Engineering.
Agnieszka Sznyk is chair of the Board at INNOWO, the Institute of Innovation and Responsible Development in Warsaw, Poland. She holds a PhD in Life Sciences and is an expert in the fields of sustainable production and consumption, circular economy and healthcare economics. Agnieszka has been connected with nongovernmental organisations for many years, notably as founder and manager of the Polish Circular Hotspot and the international educational campaign Circular Week.
Agnieszka serves as an economy expert at the CE Working Group under the National Smart Specializations (NSS) appointed by the Steering Committee, which consists of representatives of the Ministry of Investment and Economic Development, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the Ministry of Development Funds and Regional Policy in Poland.
She is author of numerous reports including:
INNOWO (the Institute of Innovation and Responsible Development) is a foundation, non-governmental organisation and a THINK-to-DO TANK established to support the development of innovation and implementation of systemic changes for the purpose of sustainable socio-economic progress. The circular economy is the main field of interest and expertise of INNOWO. The organisation supports decision-makers and different stakeholder groups in identifying effective solutions and policy instruments to engage businesses and consumers in achieving a significant and lasting change towards sustainable production and consumption.
ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability is a global network of more than 1 750 local and regional governments committed to sustainable urban development. Active in over 100 countries, ICLEI influences sustainability policy and drives local action for low emission, nature-based, equitable, resilient and circular development.
Mark Hidson joined ICLEI in 2003. He is a member of ICLEI Europe’s Board of Directors and responsible for ICLEI’s sustainable economy and procurement work. For 25 years he has worked for, and on behalf of, local, regional and national governments in project, policy and strategy development on sustainability issues such as smart cities, circular economy, business and city interaction, procurement, climate change and transport.
Freek van Eijk is CEO of Holland Circular Hotspot (HCH), a private-public platform that facilitates the transition to a circular economy at international level by bringing together government authorities, knowledge institutes and especially businesses. HCH supports knowledge exchange with the aim of stimulating entrepreneurship in the field of the circular economy.
Freek van Eijk is also vice-chair of Circular Biobased Delta, an alliance of Dutch provinces, businesses and knowledge centres pioneering a sustainable circular and biobased economy. He is one of the more senior Dutch experts in the field of waste management and the circular economy. He also serves as Managing Director of Acceleratio.
Previously, Freek van Eijk worked for over a decade as Director of strategy and PA at the multinational SUEZ and as a board member of the Dutch Waste Management Association and the Society and Enterprise Foundation and acted as a Sherpa for the EU Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials.
He has a MSc. Eng. (Delft University of Technology).
Agata Meysner is a youth activist and the director of Generation Climate Europe (GCE). She holds an LLB in European Law from Maastricht University and is currently pursuing an MSc in Public Policy from University College London specialising in the circular economy and resource efficiency. Ms Meysner previously worked at the European Environmental Bureau, where she focused on the implementation of the SDGs by and in the EU.
Generation Climate Europe is the largest coalition of youth-led networks at the European level, pushing for stronger action from the EU on climate and environmental issues. GCE brings together 460 national organisations across 47 countries in Europe. It is guided by the voices of 20 million young Europeans. GCE's mission is to create a platform for the youth to advocate for a just and green transition in Europe.
The circular economy is one of the key thematic areas for GCE, encompassing various issues such as textiles, digitalisation, energy and food systems.
EuroCommerce is the principal European organisation representing the retail and wholesale sector. It embraces national associations in 31 countries and 5.4 million companies, both leading global players such as Carrefour, Ikea, Metro and Tesco, and many small businesses. Retail and wholesale provide a link between producers and 500 million European consumers over a billion times a day. It generates 1 in 7 jobs, providing a varied career for 29 million Europeans, many of them young people. It also supports millions of further jobs throughout the supply chain, from small local suppliers to international businesses. EuroCommerce is the recognised European social partner for the retail and wholesale sector.
Nick Dornheim is advisor for Environment & Sustainability at EuroCommerce. He focuses on promoting retailers' and wholesalers' circular economy initiatives such as deploying more sustainable products, ensuring the right waste management infrastructure and empowering consumers.
Mercè Boy Roura is coordinator of the Interreg MED Green Growth community and EU project manager at the BETA Technological Center at the University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia (Spain). She is an environmental scientist with a PhD in Experimental Sciences and Sustainability. She has 10 years' international experience in research and knowledge transfer projects in the field of natural resources and sustainability.
The Interreg MED Green Growth community is a multi-stakeholder network of projects which promotes the green and circular economy in the Mediterranean by enhancing cross-sectoral innovation practices through a regional cooperation approach. Since 2016, the network has consisted of 14 projects connecting 165 partners from 13 countries in the Mediterranean. It structures its work around four focus areas: food systems, eco-innovation, smart cities and waste management. The community supports projects with their communication and capitalisation efforts, thus increasing their impact at policy level and fostering potential transfer and replication of their results in other regions. The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) labelled the Green Growth Community in October 2019, acknowledging its potential to advance cooperation in the transition to a green and circular economy in the Mediterranean region.
Reduce water use in Diageo's operations with a 40% improvement in water use efficiency in water stressed areas and 30% improvement across the company.
Replenish more water than Diageo uses for their operations for all their sites in water-stressed areas by 2026.
Invest in 150 projects to improve access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) in communities near Diageo sites and local sourcing areas in all of Diageo's water-stressed markets.
Engage in collective action in all of their Priority Water Basins to improve water accessibility, availability and quality and contribute to a net positive water impact.
Achieve zero waste in Diageo's direct operations and zero waste to landfill in Diageo's supply chain.
Ensure 100% of Diageo's packaging is widely recyclable (or reusable/compostable).
Continue to reduce packaging and increase recycled content in Diageo's packaging (delivering a 10% reduction in packaging weight + increasing the % recycled content of the packaging to 60%).
Ensure 100% of Diageo's plastics are designed to be widely recyclable (or reusable/compostable) by 2025 and achieve 40% recycled content in Diageo's plastic bottles by 2025, and 100% by 2030.
Provide all of Diageo's local sourcing communities with agricultural skills and resources, building economic and environmental resilience (supporting 150,000 smallholder farmers).
Develop regenerative agriculture pilot programmes in 5 key sourcing landscapes.
Become Net Zero carbon in Diageo's direct operations.
Reduce Diageo's value chain carbon emissions by 50%.
Use 100% renewable electricity across all of Diageo's direct operations.
By 2025, 100% recyclable beverage packaging & PET bottles of 50% recycled content.
By 2030, PET bottles of 100% recycled and/or renewable PET, 90% collected & more use of refillables.
By 2025, all new PET bottling lines will be suitable for processing up to 100% high-quality rPET without compromising output quality, efficiency or effectiveness.
By 2022, alternative secondary packaging solutions free of disposable plastics will be available for every established SKU format multipack.
Krones will leverage its technological expertise to help customers design packaging that specifically facilitates post-consumer recycling.
Krones will assist its customers to adapt existing lines in order to achieve the best possible outcomes when using recycled or renewable input materials.
With immediate effect, Krones will make available capping equipment for tethered caps.
Krones makes it possible to use detachable labels to enhance recyclability. It aims to make labels jointly recyclable with containers or to eliminate separate labelling.
Krones will continue to allocate substantial R&D resources to its recycling technology division in order to facilitate physical recycling of post-consumer plastics.
Krones will actively explore disruptive new technologies delivering beverages to consumers without conventional PET packaging (e.g. pulp bottles, no-packaging solutions).
LIPOR's Environmental Education and Intervention Program aims to create an educational offer that encourages citizens to implement good environmental practices and facilitates the acquisition of skills that support civic intervention and a sustainable development.
LIPOR intends to reach 90 000 people with its awareness campaign within its catchment area. This involves delivering about 10 direct environmental awareness actions to the community its environmental education technicians daily.
LIPOR’s annual prevention programme includes several projects and initiatives implemented across all eight municipalities aiming to prevent and reduce food waste.
With the “Embrulha" (Pack It) project LIPOR wants to engage 50 restaurants in Porto Municipality and 10 restaurants in other LIPOR municipalities to recover 6 tonnes of food waste.
The "Dose Certa" (Right Portion) project aims to certify 46 food establishments in total.
The Strategic Plan for Urban Waste 2020 (PERSU 2020) is the reference instrument of the urban waste policy in Portugal.
LIPOR has defined a target of 50 kg per inhabitant a year in 2020 for selective collection as a goal. Several projects that aim to increase multi-material and organic recovery figures are defined in LIPOR's strategic plan.
For landfills, the target is a maximum value of landfill of biodegradable waste deposition of 10%.
One public tender for catering services with fully sustainable and circular criteria.
Starbucks target is to phase out plastic straws from its more than 28,000 stores worldwide by 2020, a decision that will eliminate more than 1 billion straws a year.
100% recycled and other sustainable sourced materials by 2030.
100% recycled, certified organic or sustainable sourced cotton by 2020.
To increase the collected volume of garments to reach 25,000 tonnes annually; achieved in 2019 with 29,005 tonnes of garments collected for recycling and reuse.
100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable plastic packaging
Reduce plastic packaging by 25%
25% post recycled plastic across all packaging used
100% recycled or other sustainably sourced material
100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable plastic packaging
Reduce plastic packaging by 25%
25% post recycled plastic across all packaging used
Buyers have committed themselves to successfully completing two circular purchasing projects between June 2017 and June 2019. In practice they will choose 1 or more goals that will guide them towards circular products & services.
These goals are:
- Reduce total amount of materials
- Reduce non-renewable virgin input
- Extend the use/lifetime of products
-Optimize the potential Reuse of products&components
-Optimize the potential Recycling of products& materials
The second Circular City Centre (C3) webinar in the morning of 17 May will focus on circular city actions and solutions. A new C3 guidance document on this topic will be presented and cities will share information and experiences about their circular actions and initiatives.
LOOPS is a live webinar series committed to spotlighting innovation in the field of circular economy. The topic of this episode on 13 May will be bio-based resins and coatings, processed by two Horizon 2020 projects: Lignicoat and TomaPaint.
The Interreg MED Green Growth Community will celebrate its final event in person in Brussels on 1 June. The event will highlight the role of businesses and public authorities in the transition towards climate neutrality, sharing the project’s best practices in supporting these actors across the Euro-Mediterranean region.
The final event will also emphasise the importance of cooperation to boost the circular economy by putting forward the Community’s policy recommendations.
DiCE Lab organizes another interesting webinar on digitalization applied to the circular economy on 31 May. This time the focus is on the Internet of Things for the Circular Economy.
The circular economy is about designing out waste, but what about the emissions resulting from the manufacture and use of products and services?
Switching to a circular economy could help reduce carbon emissions and avoid climate breakdown. To stabilise global temperatures, businesses and governments must reach net zero emissions. This means that they need to implement measures first to reduce emissions as far as humanly possible and then to remove all artificial greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere.
In May and June, the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform (ECESP) and Normative will be holding a two-part #EUCircularTalks to discuss the role of carbon emissions in closing the loops in a circular economy and discuss the role played by EU policies and legislation in reducing carbon emissions.
Flexible plastic packaging is a growing and challenging segment of the plastic stream that deserves its own strategies and investments. On 5 May, the first webinar will feature perspectives and lessons from four leading organisations that have developed comprehensive roadmaps and plans to step up the recovery of flexible plastics.
The European Food Safety Authority EFSA foresight workshop Circular Future: emerging feed sources, technologies & related risks will take place online on 9-10 June 2022. The event is open to policymakers, practitioners and stakeholders from along the feed value chain, as well as scientists and experts in emerging risk identification, risk assessment and foresight selected from among participants.
The Final Conference of the WINPOL project on 25 May will give an overview of the work accomplished over more than four years. It will review the successes achieved at project level and the progress made in the use of intelligent systems and policies in the field of waste management.
The LCA4Regions partners are organising a conference in Brussels on 12 May. This will be an opportunity to share their project's initial outcomes and discuss how to apply life cycle assessment (LCA) to improve policy planning and actively make conscious decisions about resource efficiency and investments, with a focus on the sustainable built environment.
The REthinkWASTE project is organising a webinar on Pay As You Throw and Know As You Throw models on 5 May.
The European Commission is currently working on a proposal to revise the GPP criteria for buildings. To participate in the consultation process, you can register as a stakeholder on the website. The deadline for comments is on 10 May 2022.
One major issue at the moment is making the EU less reliant on Russia.
This paper from the CEPS Think thank provides insights on Russia’s share among EU sources of key supplies for low-carbon technologies. It looks at prospects for meeting future material demands through circularity for three technologies: lithium-ion batteries, wind turbines and fuel cell electric vehicles.
What are your plans for May? ACR+ will kick off an entire month dedicated to innovation and circular economy in waste management. Through several events, ACR+ will showcase some of its activities and projects fostering innovative approaches and practices to reach a circular economy.
Almost all countries in the UNECE region, covering the US, Canada, Eastern and Western Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia, have adopted national policies which are directly or indirectly related to the sustainable management of natural resources and the circular economy. On 6 April 2022, UNECE launched a new CIRCULAR STEP platform for policy dialogue on the circular economy.
In the context of a three-year project on “Innovative Business Practices and Economic Models in the Textile Value Chain” (InTEX), UNEP is seeking an Implementing Partner to support its impact assessment work on sustainable economic pathways for sustainable and circular textiles. The deadline for submitting proposals is 16 May 2022.
The Circulab Academy is an independent design studio and strategy consulting agency that helps organizations worldwide imagine and design regenerative solutions. It provides online courses based on powerful and open source circular design tools, created and enhanced by Circulab since 2014.
Now the Circulab Academy has a new free online course "Activate the Circular Economy".
Circular Cities offers grants for start-ups combined with a tailor-made accelerator programme with circular focus and climate impact. They connect start-ups with the largest climate-focused community in the world powered by EIT Climate-KIC ClimAccelerator as well as investors, partner cities, corporates and ecosystem partners. The programme will be run virtually, free of charge and in English.
The Czech Circular Hotspot will be launched on 12 April with an opening ceremony in the Kampus Hybernská in Prague. The event is organized by the Czech Institute of Circular Economy.
Today the Commission presented a package of European Green Deal proposals to make sustainable products the norm in the EU, boost circular business models and empower consumers for the green transition. The proposed rules are to make almost all physical goods on the EU market more friendly to the environment, circular, and energy efficient throughout their lifecycle.
On 23 March 2022, the EU Ecolabel officially turned 30 years old. With over 80 000 goods and services awarded the label across 24 product groups, the EU Ecolabel is widely recognised across Europe.
This Reflection paper of the ECESP Leadership Group on Network governance and circular economy hubs draws on the lessons learned when a group of ECESP Coordination Group members focused on road-mapping processes in various countries. The key to success is making the networks work, making them actionable, with a focus on network governance and the role of individual circular economy hubs.
The built environment has a significant impact on a multitude of sectors, on local jobs and on quality of life. The construction sector accounts approximately for 50% of materials extracted in Europe, and is responsible for more than 35% of Europe's waste.
Extended Producer Responsibility Schemes (EPR) are increasingly used across Member States to finance proper waste management. The workshop discussed the take-aways, benefits but also shortcomings of EPR Schemes, in order to focus on the various areas of improvements. Particular emphasis was placed on the role played by eco-modulation of fees.
While digital networking is of great advantage for everyday life, the incredible amounts of electrical devices bring with it some particularly ecological risks, especially with regard to the use of resources. This is why the European Commission in the New Circular Economy Action Plan announced a Circular Electronics Initiative. There are still many challenges to be discussed during this workshop.
This workshop brought together experts from various organisations to discuss topics like the undervalued importance of infrastructure in tackling climate change, discuss the markets for secondary resources, the relevance of deconstruction design to enable the renovation wave, and stress value-chains collaboration.
At a moment when the EU stakeholders hold their breath for the EU Textiles strategy to be published, this workshop aims to give a final signal to the policy makers that a high level of ambition needs to be maintained in the upcoming proposal in order to create a watershed moment for the textile production and consumption, and more importantly for its global impact on the society and environment.
This workshop aims to better understand the key ingredients for the successful circular transformation as well as the definition of the optimal profile of the transition broker.
This workshop used the concrete example of procurement of charging stations for electrical vehicles to link circular procurement to the energy transition.
The Cities & Regions Leadership Group in 2021 continued the work on the analysis of indicators to measure the transition to the circular economy in cities and regions.
This workshop capitalized on those discussion points, gearing the discussions towards the definition of operational cooperation leads between different initiatives supporting CE transition in cities and regions.
This workshop session was divided into three different thematic blocks focussing on:
Fashion For Change is a 3-year project co-financed by COSME, the European Union programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. Together with COSME, Fashion For Change is enhancing the competitiveness and environmental performance of European fashion SMEs, designers and start-ups.
Greece's Green Fund aims to enhance development by protecting the environment. It achieves this goal by managing and providing financial and technical support for programmes, measures, interventions and actions geared towards safeguarding and restoring the environment, with a view to supporting the country's environmental policy and serving the public and social interest.
Submit your R&I project proposal and attend Info days for the 2022 Horizon Europe circular economy related calls under Cluster 4 ‘Digital, Industry and Space’ and Cluster 6 ‘Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment’!
Cluster 4 calls are open for submission; deadline: 30 March 2022. Cluster 6 calls open for submission on 28 October 2021; deadline: 15 February 2022.
In September 2018, Intesa Sanpaolo launched a Circular Economy Plafond to finance innovative and transformative projects and companies that adopt Circular Economy principles.
The 2021 edition of BeCircular offers up to EUR 200 000 financial support for circular economy projects in the Brussels-Capital Region. Its launch event will take place online on 15 March.
This new UNEP report highlights the critical role of financial institutions in advancing the growth of circularity by investing in businesses that take a more sustainable approach to production and consumption.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation's new report highlights rapid growth in circular economy financing and investment, and describes how investors and the banking and insurance industry are capitalising on the resulting opportunities.
Eco-vouchers (Ecocheques) are an incentive for Belgian households to purchase eco-friendly goods and services, including second-hand and refurbished ones.
JLG, a company that takes machines back to a dedicated reconditioning facility after their first use cycle and repairs and restores them to original specification, builded a business model that integrates the recovery of assets.
This allowed their financial partner to develop a complete finance offering for JLG’s new and reconditioned assets, including rental solutions.
In this six-week course, participants will learn about circular economy, sustainable mobility, energy efficiency and clean energy through interactive materials, live events and working groups. The course is part of the Interreg Euro-MED Academy catalogue and will provide particpants with tangible examples of actions, policies, and tools available to apply effective solutions in their own context.
The INSIGHT training course aims to increase knowledge, skills, and competences concerning industrial symbiosis for trainees willing to become industrial symbiosis facilitators. The course, which is available for free on an online e-learning platform, is in English, but summaries of each unit are provided in Italian, Spanish, French, Slovenian and Romanian.
The Circulab Academy is proud to announce the following training courses for 2022:
The Girls Go Circular Project aims to equip 50 000 schoolgirls aged 14-18 across Europe with digital and entrepreneurial skills by 2027 through an online learning programme about the circular economy.
This open access MOOC is for entrepreneurs and students to work on a sustainable, circular or social business model using the Business Model Template (BMT).
In three phases and 10 steps, all aspects for developing a business model are systematically dealt with. The MOOC consists of a self-paced programme of seven chapters and over 50 teaching units.
Among many other circular economy and sustainable development activities, the association LlobreGats from Barcelona creates animated mini-series that help young and old to reuse, reduce, separate and properly deposit their waste both in correct trash bins and in collection points.
With Biomimicry, embrace sustainable innovation and solve your business problems by finding inspiration from nature. Learn and apply this philosophy, its methods and tools for your company, your products, services, value chains...
In this 16-hour cohort-based course, participants will learn life's principles and apply them in their business or with their customers.
This course is suitable for all professionals and individuals, from entrepreneurs to business owners and project managers, wanting to learn how to design resilient and profitable business models built on circular economy principles. In this 15-hour, self-paced course, participants will learn the basics of business ecosystem design and how to put the circular design approach into practice.
Enhancing your Detox profile does more than reduce and mitigate risks. It can also improve brand reputation, increase stakeholders' trust and make entering even the most tightly-controlled markets faster and more profitable.
The Ask a DetoXpert Webinar Series is designed to help enterprises deep-dive into the details of chemical management and drive the development of Detox-compliant processes.
More than 20 organisations have come together in a global initiative to tackle the social and environmental problems of electronics. The Circular Electronics Initiative aims to encourage organisations and consumers to take a more responsible approach to the electronic goods they use. One core activity of the initiative is the annual event #CircularElectronicsDay.
This guide helps municipal authority practitioners adopt a more circular approach to public procurement. It provides an overarching framework that should be adapted to the local context and the reality of each city. Each step includes questions to consider, examples of how other municipal authorities have implemented circular procurement, and resources.
As a company or organisation you want to contribute to circularity. This may require a new business model focused on efficient use and reuse of products, components and raw materials. You can use Saxion University of Applied Sciences' free, interactive toolset to clarify what you want to achieve and start exploring how to develop your circular business model.
This Whitepaper presents research into existing and emerging circular business models (CBMs). This results in the identification of seven basic types of CBM, divided into three groups that together form a classification.
In its publication "Transition time! A circular economy for plastics", the Dutch Sustainable Growth Coalition sheds light on the challenges of plastic, shares innovative cases and makes specific recommendations on how to incentivise action.
Following the successful #EUCircularTalks events, EuroCommerce has prepared a Toolbox for Circular Packaging in the Retail sector. This Guidance aims to offer food for thought for retailers on how to improve the sustainability of their packaging.
In 2018, the National Institute for Circular Economy (INEC) launched an Operational Programme on Purchasing and Circular Economy, together with the Métropole du Grand Paris and the Observatoire des Achats Responsables. Drawing on participants' experiences, these guidelines aim to guide private and public buyers through integrating the circular economy into their purchasing policies.
The NETWAP project has produced a set of guidelines for national and local governments to manage biowaste and optimise marine litter prevention on beaches, with an emphasis on the local/community dimension.
Available in seven languages, the Circulab toolbox has been tested and improved by hundreds of customers in many industrial sectors around the world since 2014.
These powerful tools make it possible to explore a context, map a business model with all its impacts, identify key stakeholders, and start generating circular and regenerative ideas under a systemic approach.
This open access book by Jan Jonker and Niels Faber aims to educate students and professionals on how to develop business models that have a positive impact on people, society and the ecological environment. It explores a different view of how to organise value creation, from a focus on almost exclusively monetary value creation to one that creates positive impact through multiple values.
The Expert Group on Circular Economy Financing has developed this guide to support public authorities in identifying the most suited incentives to speed up the transition towards a circular economy at national, regional or local level. Incentives aim at addressing market failures that prevent or delay the transition towards circular products, services and solutions.
Normative's carbon accounting service explains the role of carbon emissions in a circular economy and why it is important to reduce them.
CircularTool is an instrument developed by Matrec to measure the product circularity. It supports designers in the product design phase as it evaluates the choice of sustainable materials and helps them apply the Circular Economy EU Action Plan strategies and the Ecodesign Directive.
Following the study on the material flow analysis for Flanders in the period 2002-2018, which was published by the Circular Economy Policy Research Center in June 2020, this study introduces the link between the material flows in and out of the Flemish economy and the material flows within the Flemish economy.
This report is part of the ongoing research at the Policy Research Centre for Circular Economy to create a monitoring instrument to guide the transition to a circular economy in Flanders. This report presents a guiding framework specifically for circular economy in the food system and provides a first set of indicators to monitor the food system.
This report presents a circular economy monitor for the societal need fulfillment system of buildings and housing in Flanders. It is part of the CE monitor of the Circular Economy Policy Research Center.
This report is part of the ongoing research conducted by the Circular Economy Policy Research Center on creating a framework for a monitor to guide the transition to a circular economy in Flanders. It presents a set of indicators for the system of consumer goods, revealing how this system performs in relation to circular economy principles.
This report addresses blind spots in current research about the understudied circular phenomenon of reuse. It also explores the variety of channels for reuse, both formal (i.e. included in our economy through regulated economic units and protected workers) and informal (i.e. part of an informal economy in which transactions are not registered).
This report provides background data for the update of four macro indicators key to monitoring the circular economy: domestic material consumption (DMC), direct material input (DMI), raw material consumption (RMC) and raw material input (RMI).
This report presents the set of indicators comprising the mobility system. The indicators show that the mobility system is far from circular and is in fact becoming more linear. It is consuming ever greater amounts of materials, with more vehicles which are used less intensively and efficiently. The modal shift towards public transport or bicycles is simply not progressing.
This research paper on Modelling job creation in the circular economy in Flanders is the second output of the research line that studies employment and actor analysis for the circular economy.
The goal of this research paper is to investigate the impact of the transition to a more circular economy on employment in Flanders.
