
Join Digitally Circular for a bi-monthly networking event to accelerate circular economy development in Espoo 21 August 2019
Join Digitally Circular for a bi-monthly networking event to accelerate circular economy development in Espoo 21 August 2019
The conference Sustainable Consumption for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Worldwide will take place on 30 September in Berlin.
Join Kyiv's European Circular Economy Forum on 4 October 2019, organised with support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Today, most electrical/electronic equipment (EEE) is not designed for recycling, let alone for circulation. Plastics in these products account for 20% of material use, and through better design, significant environmental and financial savings could be made. Technological solutions and circular design opportunities already exist, but they have not yet been implemented. Some challenges, such as ease of disassembly, could be resolved through better communication and by sharing learnings across the value chain. Instead of WEEE, we should focus on developing CEEE: Circular Electrical and Electronic Equipment. The case examples of this report show how different stages of the lifecycle can be designed so that circular plastic becomes possible and makes business sense. It is time to take a leap in material flow management and scale up these circular solutions across the industry.
The SSCPR platform will be hosting 'Turning visionary approaches into planning policies and tools' , a research and policy conference, from 9-13 December 2019 in Bolzano (Italy), with a focus on circular economy in the track on New value propositions in times of urban innovation ecosystems and sharing economies.
The EU faces multiple challenges (climate crisis, environmental disasters, a lack of competitiveness, falling behind in the digital race, etc.) that it will need to address if it is to ensure long-term sustainable prosperity for European citizens. At the same time, there are two ongoing transitions – the creation of a circular economy and the digital transformation – that could provide the means to address these challenges, if they are managed well.
As the EU and national policymakers are making significant efforts to promote a circular economy on the one hand and a digital economy on the other, Annika Hedberg and Stefan Šipka, together with Johan Bjerkem, argue that it is time to align the agendas as a means to achieve greater sustainability and competitiveness.
This publication:
It suggests that the EU must:
This Discussion Paper builds on the findings of the EPC’s "Digital Roadmap for a Circular Economy" project of 2017-19 and paves the way for a more extensive final study, scheduled to be published in the late autumn of 2019.
The project has been supported by Aalto University and the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) (members of Helsinki EU Office), Central Denmark region, Climate-KIC, the Estonian Ministry of the Environment, Estonian Environment Investment Centre, HP, Orgalim, the province of Limburg, UL, Fondazione Cariplo and Cariplo Factory.
Werflink is an online sharing platform on which construction sites and companies and can share equipment, materials, resources, freight space and facilities. The platform has been set up in collaboration with the Flemish Construction Confederation, construction company BESIX, Circular Flanders and FLOOW2, to create a more circular construction sector.
These factsheets outline circular economy opportunities to design out urban waste and pollution, ensure products and materials maintain their value, and regenerate the natural systems in our cities.
Easy-to-reference, the factsheets are a collation of research and case examples that answer some of the most prevalent questions around what circular economy can bring to cities:
The whole collection of factsheets, by system and phase, is available on the Ellen Mac Arthur Foundation website.
The conference will introduce the recent CECIMO report on the machine tool sector and its contribution to the circular economy.
Free-of-charge smartphone app to search for circular economy products, services and events.
C-SERVEES is a European project that aims to boost a resource-efficient circular economy in the electrical and electronic (E&E) sector through the development, testing, validation and transfer of new circular economic business models based on systemic eco-innovative services.
Use of recycled plastic material (rPM) in North West Europe is homogeneously low. In packaging and building, the highest plastic-consuming sectors, only 8% of plastic employed is recyclate (Plastics Europe 2016). The Interreg NWE research project Di-Plast develops digital technology to enable complete documentation and quality assurance of recycled plastic material flows.
The ReWeee Project aims to prevent the creation of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and to demonstrate that WEEE can be efficiently sorted and re-used.
In "The contribution of the Digital Industry to repair, remanufacturing and refurbishment in a Circular Economy”, DIGITALEUROPE describes longstanding business practices in the ICT sector which represent, next to waste collection and treatment facilities, the circular economy backbone of the ICT industry in Europe.
With roughly 28,000 tons of IT equipment and spare parts being shipped cross-border annually in Europe, the ICT sector is adopting circular business practices such as designing for longevity, durability and reliability, stimulating reuse, and facilitating refurbishment. There is significant market opportunity for circular economy in the ICT sector: in 2015, the business of refurbishing IT equipment already accounted for €3.1 billion in annual turnover across 2,500+ European firms.
Alongside a series of case studies on best practice such as Nokia's Global Asset Recovery & Remarketing Services, DIGITALEUROPE outlines the following position on legislating circular economy for ICT:
The first International E-Waste Day is being held on the 13th October to promote the correct disposal of electrical and electronic equipment throughout the world.
International E-Waste Day (IEWD) has been developed by the WEEE Forum and currently involves around 40 different organisations in 20 different countries worldwide. It is being used to raise the public profile of e-waste and encourage consumers to correctly dispose of their e-waste with the resulting increase in re-use and recycling rates on the day itself and into the future.
Wastly is a B2B online platform for the marketing of secondary raw materials (SRM) resulting from waste recovery and recycling.
G-STIC 2018 builds onto the key findings of G-STIC 2017, which demonstrate that a transition to a new industry framework requires a circular economy approach that is enabled by smart technologies.
The Buildings as Material Banks project and One Planet Network invite you to join them in learning from exemplary initiatives in construction and debating how innovative tools are supporting a systemic shift towards circularity in the built environment through digitalisation, assessment and procurement.