The city of Brussels struggles with high unemployment despite its high GDP and economic potential. While its use of waste is already above EU targets, it tried to use circular economy in order to create more employment opportunities and invigorate the city's innovative potential. For this reason, it has adopted the Be Circular roadmap program, which provides training and financial support to circular startups and initiatives. Over less than two years, this program has already trained almost 1500 workers and students as well as 222 businesses, and financially supported 139 projects. It has also led to previously unknown collaboration among Brussels' governmental departments.

Despite Brussels having one of the largest GDP per capita in Europe, the city faces very high unemployment particularly among younger people. This means that the job creation potential of circular economy was particularly important in designing Brussels' circular strategy. In implementing the strategy, the city faced another problem because of how the programme required city departments to work together, something that has previously been rare in the Brussels city government.

Following a comprehensive scan of material flows within the city, the roadmap focused on creating jobs and incentivising circular entrepreneurship. This was mainly achieved through training, awareness-raising, and financial support for startups and new projects to create circular employment. Coordination of the program fell under a formal cooperation of four different municipal departments in order to avoid organisational inefficiencies.

https://www.circulareconomy.brussels/category/levers/employment-en/?lang=en