The Croatian project titled "Responsible Business for a Clean World" involves collecting unused soap in hotels and sending it to a soap factory, where it is cleaned, sterilised and recycled into new soap products, which are then offered back to customers at the hotel.
ROSi has developed innovative processes producing high quality recycled materials including silicon and other metals from PV industry production and product waste. The materials are returned to industrial value chains, leading to a circular raw material lifecycle.
Refarmed uses the concept of ‘building integrated agriculture’. High-impact buildings (meaning they produce a lot of waste and excess heat) are equipped with rooftop greenhouses which turn all that waste into value - to support low-impact food production.
ConnectedBin has developed a waste container solution using artificial intelligence to identify waste types and sort them properly. The Internet of Things system reports on waste types and amounts, making waste collection more efficient.
Residuos do Nordeste, an intermunicipal waste management company based in North-Eastern Portugal, is running an education and awareness-raising campaign called "Educar para uma Economia Circular" related to the top of the waste management hierarchy: prevention.
TailoredTile creates decorative tile pieces completely made of recovered plastic. The company also promotes circular economy by accepting used tilegrams in exchange of purchase discounts, as this material can be crushed and shaped more than once.
Sonae Arauco is a wood-based panel producer that contributes to the circular economy through the recovery of wood waste. It has developed a close value chain that reuses and recycles the wood residues generated during the production process.
This research note is a first inventory of the potential impacts of future EU circular fashion on non-European textile-producing countries. Its results suggest that the overall impact of EU circular fashion policies on textile-producing countries will be positive. Still, a short-term downturn could occur and negative impacts need to be avoided. More research is needed to substantiate the results.
The EU Ecolabel is the official European Union label for environmental excellence.
It is awarded to sustainably-designed products, thereby encouraging innovation, and contributing to the EU’s goal of climate neutrality by 2050 and to the circular economy.
Industry can use the EU Ecolabel to offer consumers an eco-friendly alternative to conventional products and help them lower their daily environmental impact.
Ambitious criteria have been set, focusing on the main environmental impacts generated over the lifecycle of these products. This ensures that EU Ecolabel hard covering products are among the best on the market in terms of environmental performance.
Access the full list of EU Ecolabel criteria for hard coverings productshere.
The Third Circular Economy Report (2021) by the Circular Economy Network, besides providing
the updated analysis on circular economy in Italy, as compared to the main EU countries, includes a focus on the role of circular economy in the transition towards climate neutrality, as well as an update on the most important measures implemented at the national and European level. This Third Report updates the analysis on the state of circular economy in Italy, assessing the results achieved in the areas of production, consumption, circular waste management, as well as investments and employment in recycling, repairing and reuse, compared with the main economies in the European Union: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland.
The Third Circular Economy Report (2021) by the Circular Economy Network and ENEA, besides providing the updated analysis on circular economy in Italy as compared to the main EU countries, includes a focus on the role of circular economy in the transition towards climate neutrality, as well as an update on the most important measures implemented at the national and European levels.
This report updates the analysis on the state of circular economy in Italy, assessing the results achieved in the areas of production, consumption, circular waste management, as well as investments and employment in recycling, repairing and reuse, with a comparison among the main economies in the EU: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland.
To read the report in full (in Italian), please click here.
In this report, nudging is explored as a complement to traditional policies (regulation, economic incentives and information campaigns) to reduce the use of single-use plastics. Behavioural insights are used to develop different options to nudge consumer preferences from single-use cups to more sustainable alternatives.
Based on careful reviews and analysis of previous nudging projects, three green nudges are proposed to catalyze this shift.
This report examines the relevant literature on behaviour change, psychology and environmental issues to learn which strategies can be effective – and which might be counterproductive – when it comes to shifting people’s actions around plastic.
The aim is to radically alter patterns of consumption and production so that Sweden becomes the world’s first fossil-fuel free welfare state. The use of plastic will play an important part in the strategy.
From the review of scholarly articles, media reports and surveys of the public, a number of recommendations emerge that can be put to use by anyone creating a campaign about plastic use.
Industry faces major challenges with regard to handling the transition to an economy with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. As yet, we are far from fully understanding the potential wider environmental impacts of this transformation. Furthermore, we are largely unaware of the untapped potential of industrial facilities in sectors covered by the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) to contribute to the circular economy.
The study aimed to provide an initial overview of the potential wider environmental impacts of industry's transition within the scope of the IED to a low carbon economy, and to gain a better understanding of how IED facilities could contribute to a circular economy.
The Circular Economy and Society Hub of Utrecht University has prepared a white paper analysing the key strengths and weaknesses of the way in which Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is organised in the Netherlands. Based on this analysis, it then sets out three pathways for improving EPR with a view to enabling it to contribute to the circular economy goals:
Optimising EPR as an instrument for post-user circularity
Re-designing EPR as an instrument for circular economy transformations
Across the world, cluster organisations have taken a leading role in the green transition. Cluster Excellence Denmark recently released a new e-book titled Towards a New Greener Normal – How Clusters are Dealing with Circular Transition in Times of COVID-19, exploring how this work has continued despite the current pandemic.
The e-book contains informative insights into how clusters are integrating the green transition and digitalisation, leading to brand new and innovative solutions with market potential.
IVA, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, has, in 2016, presented an action plan to reduce food loss and waste. As part of IVA’s project “Resource Effectiveness and Circular Economy”, the Food subproject has introduced proposals for action plans to reduce the loss and waste of food and is proposing an ambitious implementation schedule. Among the concrete measures, it has submitted a national framework proposal for how companies in different parts of the food supply chain should measure and report their data on this and how it can be done in a way than allows all the data to be compiled at the national level. Moreover, it seeks solutions for facilitating and making it possible financially for companies to measure and report lost and wasted food.
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.
Learn on Friday 3 June how the Level(s) tools can help you implement core indicators to assess and report on the sustainability performance of buildings.
A public hearing on 29 April 2022 is organised to feed into an EESC opinion on the Sustainable products initiative, including Ecodesign Directive. It will bring together speakers and participants from the EU institutions, as well as the organised civil society to discuss the proposed legislative framework.
On Thursday 28 April The European Commission invites you to an online event on the methods for measuring the life cycle performance of products and organisations: the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and the Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF).
This webinar on 26 April will show you how to help your value chain reduce its carbon emissions to fight climate change, keep your business competitive, and stay legally compliant.
Join the event on 21 April 2022 for the launch of the Circularity Gap Report Sweden to learn more about the state of circularity in Sweden and how advancing it can help strengthen climate action.
The 4th OECD Roundtable on the Circular Economy in Cities and Regions will bring together key stakeholders from cities, regions, national governments, the private sector, civil society, academia, philanthropy and international organisations on 12 April 2022.
This event on 7 April aims to explore the concept of biofactories and present the technical advances of the projects ECOVAL and WALNUT. The social, legal and market barriers for the valorisation of high added value products for agriculture and industry, such as sludge or biofertilisers obtained from waste flows from urban water treatment plants, will be discussed.
New EU Ecolabel criteria have been adopted for Electronic Displays and Printed paper, stationery paper and paper carrier bag products. Stringent criteria ensure that EU Ecolabel products are among the best on the market in terms of environmental performance. Follow the webinars on 9 and 10 December to learn more about these new criteria.
The LOOP-Ports circular economy project, coordinated by Fundación Valenciaport and co-financed by EIT Climate-KIC, will organise its final conference in an online format open to the public, on 16 December as an official side event of the World Circular Economy Forum Online hosted by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra and its partners.
SECOND HAND COUNTS is a market survey on second-hand clothes in the EU. It aims to provide facts needed for decision making on second-hand clothes both in general and on a country by country basis for all EU countries plus the United Kingdom, Norway and Switzerland.
How to stop plastics ending up in the ocean? The Rethinking Plastics – Circular Economy Solutions to Marine Litter project is working on solutions together with seven countries in East and South East Asia.
Cillian Lohan, Green Economy Foundation CEO, is also EESC vice-president and representative of the ECESP Platform. In this video for Euronews, he gives strong arguments for the circular economy as a motor to regenerate ecosystems, economies and a more sustainable future.
Is your SME providing digital solutions to make our cities more circular? Join the transformation of European Cities by applying to DigiCirc Accelerator Programme! DigiCirc Circular Cities Open Call is now open for applications!
The Circular Plastics Alliance aims to boost the EU market for recycled plastics to 10 million tonnes by 2025. The alliance covers the full plastics value chains and includes over 175 organisations representing industry, academia and public authorities. New stakeholders can join the alliance by signing its declaration.
A “Bach Forest” for the climate! To offset the CO2 footprint of the Bachfest, which every year draws Bach friends from all over the world to Leipzig (DE), organisers aim to plant 72 acres of mixed forest on a former opencast mining site over the next few years.
EU environmental rules aim to ensure that end-of-life vehicles are managed sustainably. They seek to eliminate hazardous substances in cars and require that most ELV parts and materials are reused or recycled.
The Commission would like to hear your views on its proposal to improve collection, treatment and recycling of ELVs. You can give your feedback on this initiative until 19 November 2020.
