Europe relies heavily on material resources for almost all of society’s activities. Its extraction and production of material resources have significant impacts on the environment and human health, as well as the economy.

It is essential to reuse resources in European economies, keeping their value high, delivering value for longer periods and reducing the need to use virgin materials. While progress is being made in Europe, by implementing an ambitious waste policy and the Circular Economy Framework, significant amounts of valuable resources are still lost through inefficient waste management practices.

This briefing describes material losses in Europe for some key waste streams, namely waste electrical and electronic equipment, end-of-life batteries, plastic and textile waste.

Europe is at crossroads regarding its management of plastic, plastic waste and the plastic waste trade. Rapidly growing amounts of plastic have negative environmental and climate impacts.

Plastic and plastic waste are traded worldwide. Exporting plastic waste from the EU to Asia is a means of dealing with insufficient recycling capacities in the EU. Waste import restrictions in China have shifted exports to other countries. Because some types of plastic waste have been added to the United Nations Basel Convention, the option of exporting plastic waste is becoming increasingly difficult.

This briefing provides an overview of exports of plastic waste from the 28 EU Member States (EU-28) to other countries and discusses its possible consequences and opportunities.

A set of 32 country factsheets has been produced that summarise policies and initiatives on the area of resource efficiency and circular economy.

These country profiles are based on information reported by the Eionet network and, in particular, the National Reference Centres on Resource Efficiency and Circular Economy. The information is current as of March 2019, when members of Eionet verified the content of their respective profiles.

Each country profile was prepared as part of the 2019 European Environment Agency review of material resource efficiency, circular economy and raw material supply policies, which aimed to collect, analyse, and disseminate information about experience with the development and implementation of these policies in EEA member and cooperating countries.

This report from the European Environment Agency reviews waste prevention policies in Europe with a focus on how these policies approach the issue of plastics and plastic waste.

Waste prevention is at the centre of EU waste legislation as it delivers the most effective results in dealing with environmental issues around waste, placing it at the top of EU and national waste strategies and legislation.

Waste prevention can be implemented in any waste stream, but it needs to be customised to reflect each stream's particularities. This report focuses on plastic waste, as there is potential for substantial mitigation of the environmental issues raised by increased plastic consumption through the use of waste prevention instruments and mechanisms.

Since 2016, the Brussels-Capital Region has set the circular economy as one of its strategic priorities, and is implementing concrete actions to that effect.

Where are we today? Is this just the beginning of a major cultural shift? What are the main challenges ahead? To find out, the authors met numerous actors - public or private - on the ground to better understand the implications of 'circularising' the Brussels Region.

This brochure gives an overview of the promises and limitations for this new economic model with concrete examples, providing inspiration and grounds for further reflection on transitioning to the circular economy.  

With textiles rightly rising as a key priority under the new European Commission, this document outlines RREUSE’s vision on how to achieve a more inclusive and circular textile sector that prioritises re-use and emphasises the role of social enterprises in the value chain as part of the solution.

This paper also provides a number of key recommendations as to what specific actions the Commission should address when developing policy initiatives for the sector.

Berlin has the potential to become the first Circular City in Germany, due to its growing variety of initiatives, grass-roots and research work in the area of circular economy (CE).

This report provides information on the development of the project Circular Berlin, which started in 2018 and is financed by the EIT, under Horizon 2020.

The project consists of 4 phases:

1. Pre-assessment (conducting awareness meeting with CE professionals, identifying CE initiatives, finding partners etc.) - already completed
2. Feasibility Check
3. Vision Development
4. Implementation

Cities can play a pivotal role in creating an enabling environment through regulations and incentives, but the private sector needs to collaborate and explore the cross-sectoral synergies required to achieve a circular model. There are immense opportunities for public-private collaboration in achieving goals that might not otherwise be possible for cities to accomplish alone.

Cities are embedding circular thinking in their utility processes, placing the onus on the private sector to come up with new business models that are both economically viable and ecologically sustainable. This could potentially result in a situation whereby circular products and services become the new market standard.

This report provides a cross-country review of waste, materials management and circular economy policies in selected OECD countries, drawing on OECD’s Environmental Performance Reviews for 11 countries during the period 2010-17. It presents the main achievements in the countries reviewed, along with common trends and policy challenges, and provides insights into the effectiveness and efficiency of waste, materials management and circular economy policy frameworks.

As the selected reviews were published over a seven-year period, information for some countries may be more recent than for others. Nevertheless, the policy recommendations emerging from the reviews may provide useful lessons for other OECD countries and partner economies.