On Thursday 23 June 2022, from 13:30 to 15:30 CEST, the United Nations Environment Program will be hosting a webinar to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Life Cycle Initiative. The event will take stock of how Life Cycles Approaches have accelerated the transition to sustainable consumption and production.
The MERLIN project (Increasing the quality and rate of MultilayER packaging recycLINg waste) aims at designing innovative solutions for all the processes required to increase the quality and rate of recycled plastic materials coming from multi-layer packaging waste. MERLIN’s new solutions will meet the growing number of plants that are seeking effective solutions.
The first Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU) Info Day will take place online on 7 June 2022.
Join the event to find out about the new CBE JU partnership and the 2022 call for proposals and build your network via the CBE JU platform.
The Circular Economy Network in Islands (RECIS) is a non-profit association based on the island of Gran Canaria.
It studies and disseminates circular economy solutions to resource scarcity and environmental fragility, which hinder the development of island territories. It also promotes the circular economy in islands and nurtures good practices and sustainability. The network takes a broad approach, since many of the problems facing islands require multidisciplinary solutions.
The network focuses on:
ECOFUNCO is a European research project developing new bio-based coatings for plastic and cellulose substrates. For the project's closing event, the ECOFUNCO consortium is organising the 1st Conference on Green Chemistry and Sustainable Coatings. The conference will take place on 17 and 18 June 2022 in Pisa, Italy, and will be streamed online.
The LIFE CIRC-ELV project has developed a new process for managing end-of-life vehicles to recover bumpers and fuel tanks, recycle the materials and use them to manufacture pipes and new parts for vehicles. Using this recycled plastic in products from this industry and others will help reduce the carbon footprint by 85%.
During this event, members of the Inclusive Wise Waste Cities (IWWCs) project from China and the Netherlands will explore the transition to the circular economy.
The Circular Week is an international series of events and initiatives dedicated to circular economy and sustainable development all over Europe. It aims to promote the idea of circular economy, support sustainable business models and establish cooperation between stakeholders.
Its 5th edition, from 3 to 9 October 2022, will include workshops, debates, meetings, expert panels and matchmaking sessions for business. Its culminating event is the Mazovia Circular Congress on 7 October.
As the Horizon 2020 research programme becomes Horizon Europe, what better time to see how great ideas turned into real projects? LOOPS will be the opportunity to show what cutting-edge research has been produced, and what changes it can bring to our communities.
For those who are not familiar with it, LOOPS is a live webinar series committed to spotlighting innovation in the circular economy. The topic of the episode on 3 June will be the EU Soil Strategy.
The Romanian Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform (ROCESP) was launched at national level by the Ernest Lupan Institute for Research in Circular Economy and Environment (IRCEM).
ROCESP members include local and central government institutions, academic, research and innovation institutions, businesses and civil society representatives.
The platform aims to promote and reinforce circular economy measures at national level and to facilitate cross-sectoral dialogue in Romania. It acts through 11 working groups, such as: Social and collaborative economy, Urban and territorial development, Energy efficiency, Education and training for the circular economy, Mobility and transport, Materials, Goods and packaging.
Resourceful Cities is an URBACT Action Planning Network of European cities that want to develop next-generation urban resource centres to accelerate the transition to the circular economy. The idea for this network arose from one of the actions identified by the Urban Agenda Partnership on Circular Economy under its ‘better knowledge’ pillar - namely to promote Urban Resource Centres for waste prevention, re-use and recycling.
Broadly these centres serve as connection points for citizens, new businesses, researchers, and the public sector to co-create new ways of closing local resource loops, while promoting waste prevention, re-use, repair, and recycling. Their precise manifestation will differ from city to city in response to the local context and needs identified.
The EU-funded OLEAF4VALUE project has set up a consortium of highly experienced partners to develop a valorisation system for the olive leaves biomass. The consortium will address all levels of the value chain: raw material, biorefining, post-extraction technologies, market validation and sustainability assessment.
One major issue at the moment is making the EU less reliant on Russia.
This paper from the CEPS Think thank provides insights on Russia’s share among EU sources of key supplies for low-carbon technologies. It looks at prospects for meeting future material demands through circularity for three technologies: lithium-ion batteries, wind turbines and fuel cell electric vehicles.
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:
Book launch for "Social and Cultural Aspects of the Circular Economy: Towards Solidarity", edited By Viktor Pál.
During this open and free webinar on 5 April, the book chapter authors will be sharing some of the insights set out in chapter 9 on "Assessing through a gender-inclusion lens the social impact of circular strategies in the apparel value chain: The Dutch case".
This Reflection paper of the ECESP Leadership Group on Network governance and circular economy hubs draws on the lessons learned when a group of ECESP Coordination Group members focused on road-mapping processes in various countries. The key to success is making the networks work, making them actionable, with a focus on network governance and the role of individual circular economy hubs.
The project, funded under Horizon 2020, aims to develop a systemic circular approach to floor coverings.
ReCreate pushes towards circular construction by investigating the system changes needed in the whole ecosystems of construction and demolition.
Each year, humanity consumes resources equivalent to 1.7 planets. Sustainable resource use is therefore essential if we are to achieve our national environmental and climate objectives and the sustainable global development goals in the 2030 Agenda.
RE:Source is a strategic innovation programme co-funded by the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems (Vinnova), the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (Formas) and the Swedish Energy Agency. The programme focuses on research and innovation in sustainable material use.
Within RE:Source, the RE:Agenda describes the innovation area of sustainable use of resources, which aims to support solutions that contribute to the efficient use of the earth’s resources within the planetary boundaries.
SUM 2022 - 6th Symposium on Circular Economy and Urban Mining - will take place from 18 to 20 May 2022 in the fascinating venue of Capri, Italy. The Symposium, organised biennially since 2012 by the International Waste Working Group (IWWG), is the reference forum for resource recovery from waste, where scientists and stakeholders can debate cutting edge results and focus on future needs. The conference programme will include parallel tracks of oral sessions, workshops, poster presentations and much more.
AIMPLAS, the Plastics Technology Centre, has now completed the fourth and final year of the RepescaPlas project. The project has developed a complete management system for plastic waste recovered from the sea and subsequent recycling into products of commercial value.
The online symposium "Smart Process Systems Engineering 2022: Towards sustainable and circular production processes" on 2-4 March 2022 will cover both engineering and social sciences. You can register and submit an abstract for a flash presentation until 20 February.
SmartProSys is a research initiative for sustainable chemistry and circular economy at the Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany (contact).
It aims to transform the linear, fossil-based process chain of the chemical industry into a sustainable, fully closed and energy-efficient cycle.
The chemical recycling process is a complex, multi-layered process with numerous components. However, this cycle should result in a final product that is dynamic, flexible, and adaptable to the environment.
