With FarmacoAmico, CiboAmico and Cambia il Finale, the HERA has moved beyond its core business to actively prevent medicines, food and bulky goods from becoming waste.

Karün is a Swedish-Chilean company producing sunglass frames entirely from discarded fishing nets and jeans, collected in Patagonia.

GIDA is a wastewater treatment plant that helps meet the needs of the local textile industry by supplying water of sufficiently high quality, while keeping water consumption to a minimum. 

VertECO consists of a vertical ecosystem (vertical constructed wetland) treating greywater from handwash basins, showers, and laundries.

Novamont produces biopolymer products that are 100 % biodegradable and compostable from its MATER-BI® material for catering, agriculture and packaging.

WREP (Waste REcycling Project) 2018 was a pilot project by the Italian PVC forum designed to improve the collection and recycling of polyvynil chloride in Venice. This pilot forms part of a wider, 3-year project to increase recycling of post-use PVC, and focused on the demolition and recycling sectors in particular. 

Food Waste Combat Cluj is one of the first multi-stakeholder initiatives combating food loss and food waste in Romania. Working in partnership, local environmental associations and municipal authorities have been able to set up an infrastructure that collects excess food from the food and drinks industry and transports this to social NGOs helping out people in need. 

Kierrätyskeskus is a growing chain of seven big box re-use stores, selling all possible furniture, household items and craft supplies in the Helsinki area.

When Dublin's Ballymun suburb was scheduled for regeneration, a local environmental project redeveloped the neighbourhood's heating plant into a 3D textbook on repair, reuse and refurbish. The Rediscovery Centre, housed in the old boiler house, is now a cutting-edge creative space connecting people, resources and ideas that includes four social enterprises.

Ecotrel is the waste electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) recycling association for all of Luxembourg which has recently launched a "circularity and solidarity cluster" of business and social enterprises. These take back WEEE in order to re-use, disassemble or recycle it, and also to delete the personal data still stored in electronic waste.

The Fairphone 3, launched in 2019, is one of the first modular smartphones, with components designed for longer use first and refurbishment when they finally break down. 

Infinited Fiber has developed a process technology that can turn cotton rich textile waste into new fibers for the textile industry. Not just once, but infinitely. These new Infinna™ textile fibers can be recycled again and again without decreasing the quality of the fiber.

8 millions of cigarette stubs are generated each minute in the world, and 66% of them currently end up in the environment, where they take up to 15 years to decompose. In addition, chemical components in cigarette filters generate residual pollution.

MéGO! offers a pragmatic answer with a service for collecting, sorting and recycling cigarette stubs. 

CelluTex is a Swedish advocacy platform that promotes needed actions to ensure production of cellulose-based textiles in Europe, utilizing forest resources and recycled cellulosic textiles, including cotton, as raw materials.

The ECOALF foundation has embarked upon its most ambitious project to date: Upcycling the Oceans, an unprecedented worldwide adventure that is helping to remove up to 200 tonnes of waste from the bottom of the oceans thanks to the support of over 3000 fishermen.

Bracenet collects discarded fishing nets, sends these to Norway to have them turned into fabric and then produces unique wristbands in workshops that provide employment opportunities to disabled persons.

Glass wool is infinitely and completely recyclable. Regardless of the glass wool’s quality, age, density or other properties, the material is entirely recyclable and can be re-melted as many times as necessary, before entering into the composition of new insulating products, without having its final quality impacted.

Facing dramatic deindustrialisation and an uncertain future, the city of Turin implemented processes that paired physical redevelopment with strategic planning to promote citywide revitalisation and economic restructuring in the 1990s. While the transformation has been profound, current challenges call for more circular strategies and an inclusive approach.

Munich has taken its ambitious waste reduction strategy to the next level by developing an innovative reuse lab and shop concept. Its Halle 2 municipal secondhand store not only enables citizens to take responsibility for living more sustainably, it also provides opportunities for job creation, educational programmes and voluntary activities.

Birmingham is Britain’s youngest and fastest growing city having also the strongest economy outside the capital and being one of the first cities to adopt a proactive industrial symbiosis approach to develop a medium and long-term strategy for sustainable economic development. The projects born from the industrial symbiosis approach are part of Birmingham’s circular economy strategy.