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.

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:

• concealed social conflict and potential trade-offs
• strengthened the agency of ‘status quo’ agents
• excluded alternative voices questioning the proposed CE narrative.

The paper discusses how to develop new environmental narratives outside the status quo.

The circular economy (CE) is gaining momentum in cities. To ensure a sustainable CE, it is crucial to measure the environmental performance of CE strategies. However, environmental assessments overlook several strategies that are a key feature of urban CE practice. These include reuse and repair, sustainable built infrastructure and urban land use, green public procurement, smart information and access technology.

To provide insights into the environmental performance and potential of these strategies, industrial ecologists and municipalities should:

• collaborate with urban systems experts
• quantify the environmental impacts of entire urban systems
• combine environmental assessments with social and economic feasibility ones.

This literature review identified and categorised circular economy (CE) practices within all stages of the food and feed production chain in Europe to provide an overview of current and envisaged practices. There are four macro areas:

1. primary production of food and feed
2. reducing industrial/manufacturing/processing waste
3. reducing food and feed waste in wholesale, food retail, catering and households and
4. reducing food and feed packaging waste.

It is recommended that future primary research in novel food and feed in the CE focuses on areas other than insect farming, and that there are further investigations into the potential risks associated with importation into the EU of livestock/goods that may have been subject to different restrictions/legislation.

This book provides answers on how to govern the transition to a circular economy in different socio-cultural and political contexts.

It is intended to help the global changemakers who are building our circular future. Author Jacqueline Cramer spoke with 20 representatives of circular hotspots worldwide, thoroughly analysed their different contexts and extracted 10 key takeaways. Everyone working on circular initiatives can use these and adapt them to their own socio-cultural and political contexts.

In this book, Jacqueline Cramer shows how network governance can power the circular economy. Network governance is about building a coalition of partners, which all fulfill a specific function in the network and are aligned by so-called transition brokers. By complementing conventional, public governance with this new form of governance, the best of both worlds is created.

Prof. Cramer shares her huge experience of implementing numerous circular initiatives in the Netherlands. As a practitioner and scholar, she has identified ten guiding principles for building circular initiatives, based on network governance. These guidelines can support everyone who wants to start or expedite a circular initiative.

This is a guide to help practitioners in a city government to adopt a more circular approach to public procurement. Public procurement processes differ from one city to another and therefore this guide is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, it provides an overarching framework that should be adapted to the local context and the realities of a city.

Users are not expected to read the guide in full from beginning to end, but rather, once they have read the framework overview, to jump to the section they need by using the menu bar on the left.

The availability of a quality infrastructure system – networks of roads, railways, bridges and waterways – is a prerequisite for all economic activity to flourish and is also paramount for people’s health, wellbeing and safety. Infrastructure is very important for human society - but its adverse environmental impact on our planet is undeniable.

To mitigate the long-term catastrophic effects of climate change and depleting material resources, a circular economy for infrastructure is crucial. The publication Circular Infrastructure: the road towards a sustainable future aims to bring this aspect into the limelight to inspire action by public actors and practitioners.

There is an intense debate about how to close the gap between the current climate policy and the aim of the Paris Agreement to achieve close to net-zero emissions by mid-century. The materials and chemicals that heavy industry produces are essential inputs to major value chains: transportation, infrastructure, construction, consumer goods, agriculture.

Material Economics' study Industrial Transformation 2050 - Pathways to Net-Zero Emissions from EU Heavy Industry starts with a broad mapping of options to eliminate fossil CO₂-emissions from production, including many emerging innovations in production processes. It also integrates them with the potential for a more circular economy: making a better use of the materials already produced and so reducing the need for new production.