4 Horizon 2020 projects working on biowaste valorisation have teamed up to promote innovative solutions for the circular bioeconomy. This joint initiative is named ROOTS-circulaR pOlicies for changing the biOwasTe System. The projects - HOOP, ValueWaste, Scalibur and WaysTUP - are piloting new solutions to transform urban biowaste and wastewater into valuable products like Feed, Fertilisers, Bioplastics, Biopesticides, Proteins and Bioethanol.

The promoters have discussed their views and shared their concerns on policy barriers hindering innovations that lead to the Circular Economy for urban biowaste. As a result of the discussion, 4 focus topics have been singled out, accompanied by proposed solutions, that will constitute the key messages and be addressed in future initiatives.

The EESC and CCMI believe that the present/future of critical raw materials resilience is of essential concern to EU's organised civil society. For this reason, and because the CEAP represents a step forward with a clear roadmap for initiatives and actions, the EESC recommends that the Parliament and the Council support this approach.

The EESC position concerns 6 main objectives:

• Supporting sustainable primary sourcing in Europe
• Fostering secondary sourcing from waste and circular reuse
• Maintaining extractive and processing capacities in the EU
• Investing in activities that can foster substitution
• Diversifying trading partners and supporting developing countries
• A more frequent review of the critical raw materials list.

18 Italian Consumer Associations sponsored by Eni have identified the challenges to be tackled and the actions to be implemented in order to empower consumers for the circular economy transition in a document titled Circular Consumption Charter.

According to the Charter, circular consumption should be:

1. Educated, conscious
2. Transparent
3. Properly informed 
4. Ongoing comparative
5. Balanced
6. Multiple lifetime
7. Shared and collaborative
8. Increasingly digital
9. Inclusive green
10. Accessible
11. Moderate, non-wasteful

 Proposed actions

1. Circular education pathways
2. Labelling handbook
3. Circular product digital data sheet
4. Circular incentives
5. Physical platforms
6. Digital platform
7. Monitoring and disseminating

For more information click here.

Textiles are an important issue for cities, as people generate more and more textile waste. City authorities are required to provide for separate collection of used textiles but have limited ways of putting the waste generated to good use.

Eurocities’ paper on circular textiles is published ahead of the Commission's new Strategy for Sustainable Textiles, planned for autumn 2021, to help the EU shift to a climate-neutral, circular economy (CE) where products are designed to be more durable, reusable, repairable, recyclable and energy-efficient. It focuses on a sustainable recovery of the textile sector from the Covid-19 crisis by:

• making it more competitive,
• applying CE principles to production, waste management, etc.
• and directing investment, research and innovation.

The transition to a circular economy is at an early stage in the EU.

Regulations, markets and investment tools, including financial risk assessment, are adapted to linear models. Generally speaking, externalities linked to linear business models are not taken into account. This poses a problem for emerging circular models, which have to contend with the challenge of accessing finance, as the financial sector sees circular projects as highly risky.

To improve the conditions for financing CE projects, the Expert Group on Circular Economy Financing identified the main areas where incentives are needed, addressing recommendations to policy makers, financial institutions and project promoters.

See also: Incentives to boost the CE report.

Over the past decades concepts such as sustainability and industrial development have slowly come to the same operational logic, as demonstrated by a growing interest in exploring and describing the synergy between developments in the circular economy and industrial digitalisation. There is agreement on their complementarity evolution paths, but no outlook is available regarding the co-evolution staging and structuring. This paper based on desk and empirical research presents an approach to outline the likely path of evolution.

So far, the notion of transition to sustainability has been applied in single sector studies, while reality indicates that the systemic change required cuts across thematic technologies and sectors. The approach taken can be useful to enrich current analyses.

As an impact leader and frontrunner promoting resource circularity, TOMRA has extensively explored, analysed and collaborated with value chain partners to address the ever-increasing global problem of waste. This white paper presents the challenges, projections and opportunities involved in managing post-consumer waste in developed and developing countries. It describes how society can speed up the transition to a circular economy by collecting and recycling waste, especially plastic packaging and other carbon-intensive materials.

The white paper can be downloaded from TOMRA's website, but this requires registering in a third party's data base and submitting your email address. 

This joint position paper from the Wardrobe Change coalition contains recommendations for the EU Strategy for Sustainable Textiles. It has been signed by 25 civil society organisations. The paper sets out recommendations structured around four overarching principles:

• Make sustainable textile products the norm
• Drive resource-sufficient textile consumption
• Leave the linear business model behind
• Hold the EU textile industry responsible for its role in the world.

The COVID-19 may have hit the pause button on tourism, but it also highlighted the need to switch to the circular economy.

This report summarises the findings of a two-year policy dialogue with the city of Granada in Spain, and provides recommendations and a vision to transition to a circular economy. It draws on Granada’s own experience with the transformation of a wastewater treatment plant into a bio factory in 2015, which contributed to increased water reuse and the production of new material from waste. The report argues that the city of Granada can play a role as a promoter, facilitator and enabler of the circular economy. This will require a collective and coordinated approach across all stakeholders and levels of government.

The circular economy promises a move away from a linear model of growth (extract, make, dispose) to a sustainable model (recycle, reuse, remake, share). This report, Safe Jobs in the Circular Economy, commissioned by the European Public Service Union (EPSU), focuses on the role of labour in the transition to a circular economy and, in particular, the health and safety of workers operating waste and wastewater management systems.