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Rampant material extraction is pushing the ecosystems of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to their limits. Over 11% of global raw materials are extracted within the region, yet it represents only about 8% of the world's population.

[*The Circularity Gap Report* (CGR) Latin America and the Caribbean](https://www.circularity-gap.world/lac), a first of its kind, demonstrates how the region can leverage the circular economy to tackle systemic inefficiencies in satisfying societal needs, conserve its unique natural wealth, and improve its people’s well-being.

To devise pathways for a circular transition, the report analysed the sectors where circular interventions could yield the most positive impact—environmentally, economically, and socially. This entails shifting to a circular food system, building a circular built environment, advancing circular manufacturing, transforming the energy system, reducing waste generation, and improve waste cycling.

[Circle Economy](https://www.circle-economy.com/) is a global impact organisation with an international team of passionate experts based in Amsterdam. We empower industries, cities, and nations with practical and scalable solutions to put the circular economy into action. Our vision is an economic system that ensures the planet and all people can thrive. To avoid climate breakdown, our goal is to double global circularity by 2032. Through the Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative, our mission is to deliver Circularity Metrics that measure the state of the global and national economy and identify key levers to transition to circularity. 

Latin America Collection

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Business case

Impact on increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

Impact on the quantity or quality of jobs, and shifts in the labour market

Jobs

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

Contribution to social parity, or impact on social disparity

Equality

Direct and indirect effects that increase revenues or the potential for new revenues, for example from new products, customer segments, partnerships or business models

Revenue Potential

Impact on the ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

Reduced use and withdrawal of water and rate of recycling and reuse of water

Save Water (SDG6)

Contributing to the improvement of biodiversity including species diversity, total number of protected species, and ecosystem health

Biodiversity

Providing water and sewage services, including water collection and distribution, water treatment systems and sewage treatment facilities

Water and Sewage

Collecting waste from households and businesses by means of refuse bins, wheeled bins, containers, etc., and providing treatment, incineration, materials recovery and reclamation, and disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous waste

Waste Management

Producing and providing services that utilise the creative talent of individuals to generate intellectual property, including movies and television shows, music, live performances, advertising, marketing or public relations services, newspapers, magazines and books, and commercial printing services

Creative Services

Producing and gathering crop and animal products from land and water through farming, hunting, and fishing

Agriculture

Using bio-based materials such as bioplastics, mushroom-based materials, etc.

Alternative bio-based materials and inputs

Enacting measures that optimise material use such as 3D printing, etc.

Material efficiency

Replacing freshwater use with rainwater, fogwater, seawater, etc.

Alternative water use

Enacting measures that optimise water use

Water efficiency

Preserving and conserving biological products such as food, forests, etc.

Preservation, conservation

Transforming waste products, materials for reuse within other industries

Open loop upcycling

Designing products so they produce as little waste as possible during production

Design for minimal waste

Designing products so they use as little materials, water, energy, etc. as possible during use

Design for resource efficiency

Designing products that can easily breakdown and degrade in the environment

Design for bio-degradability

Provide guidance or professional training to educate employees to use circular economy principles

Training on the circular economy

Initiatives with disadvantaged communities, minorities, people distanced from the labour market

Give-back programmes

Working together with the community and engaging them in the company operations

Joint product development

Circular Economy in school programmes

Encourage workplace training

Conduct research

Develop regenerative infrastructure

Develop infrastructure to support sustainable lifestyles

Monitoring & enforcement

Environmental assessment & permits

Awareness raising events

Develop infrastructure to support resource cycling

Impacts

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Industries

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A framework of policy instruments that enabled and encourage the transition to the circular economy

Policy Instruments

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A framework of policy instruments that enable and stimulate the transition to the circular economy

The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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Bogotá will become the first city in Colombia and the second in Latin America with a Waste-to-Energy Plant —a model that is also being implemented in parallel in Mexico City— in which inorganic waste is decomposed through heat. This process is beneficial for the environment, since it generates low CO2 emissions and makes waste management efficient by converting waste into energy. “For those who believed that our Climate Action Plan and the POT were just regulations, today we show you another result. We are on the Doña Juana public where we now have two technologies at work; the first is the Biogas plant, the second is the burying of garbage. The latter is harmful as it produces leachates, methane, and greenhouse gases,” said the Mayor, Claudia López.Bogotá’s representative added: “Today we are announcing to the city that we will now have a third technology to treat waste that will reduce the environmental impact and generate energy for the city. With this new plant we are fulfilling our promise to residents of Ciudad Bolívar, Usme, and Tunjuelito, who asked us to stop taking waste to their boroughs to bury it there. We are not going to continue to expand Doña Juana.”Here, a tweet in which Mayor López, recalls that with this Waste-to-Energy Plant she fulfills a promise she made to Bogotá:Transformar Doña Juana en un parque de innovación tecnológica con energías limpias, que brinde beneficios para la comunidad del sur de la ciudad, fue mi compromiso como candidata, hoy es mi promesa cumplida como Alcaldesa y parte de #LaBogotáQueEstamosConstruyendo! pic.twitter.com/CQ5iR22WvW
— Claudia López Hernández (@ClaudiaLopez) May 11, 2022The process begins today with the publication of the contract pre-specifications, which will be available on the SECOP II public procurement platform for 20 business days. Subsequently, the final bid specifications will be published and the public tender will be held, to be awarded in September of this year.“This is an achievement that passed through the government program, through the Development Plan, and through the POT. Now, it is a reality. This model has already been implemented in other parts of the world and now we’re doing it here, in Bogotá. Now we can proudly tell our people that we are treating waste differently,” said Luz Amanda Camacho, director of the Special Administrative Unit of Public Services (UAESP, as the acronym in Spanish).In this tweet, Mayor Claudia López, shares that as of May 11, the tender to build this technological innovation park will open:Bienvenidos a otra meta cumplida del POT y del Plan de Acción Climática de Bogotá! Hoy abrimos licitación internacional para tener una nueva tecnología de procesamiento de residuos en Doña Juana: la termovalorización, que transforma residuos en energía limpia. pic.twitter.com/WEl1stlRc3
— Claudia López Hernández (@ClaudiaLopez) May 11, 2022The plant, which will be built in the Doña Juana Innovation Park, will be implemented in modules. The first module will come into operation in December of next year, and by 2027, it will transform between 2400 and 3000 tons of waste every day, generating more than 128 megawatts of energy, enough to power all public lighting in Bogotá or more than 40,000 homes in the city.Additionally, the ashes resulting from the combustion of waste will be sold as construction materials. In this way, the use of one hundred percent of the treated material is guaranteed, as is the reduction of the generation of leachates that affect the subsoil and the Tunjuelito River. In addition, thanks to the emissions cleaning system, the Waste-to-Energy Plant together with Biogas Colombia will reduce the emissions of polluting gases to the ozone layer by 66 percent, compared to what is produced today with the burying of waste.This plant will become a benchmark for other cities in Colombia and the region, by contributing to changing the current model of waste treatment and promoting the circular economy in Bogotá, contributing to the fight against climate change.“The management of public waste with this plant will reduce the production of methane and greenhouse gases, in addition to lowering emissions and their impact. The leachates that contaminate the Tunjuelo river basin will also be reduced,” confirmed the Secretary of Environment, Carolina Urrutia.The financial model proposed by the UAESP for this process includes the sale of both the energy generated and the ashes resulting from the plant’s operations, with the aim of obtaining the necessary income for its continued correct functioning, avoiding an increase in cleaning fees paid by citizens.“Today we buried 6200 tons of waste in Bogotá, now with the Biogas plant and the Waste-to-Energy plant, this waste will be transformed into energy. This model will contribute to the circular economy and will not affect the rate that we currently pay for cleaning,” added the director of the UAESP. This important project is added to the portfolio of waste management initiatives carried out by Bogotá’s Recycling Organizations, as well as the organic waste treatment pilot projects, and of special note, the reduction of 7000 tons per month of demolition and construction waste, the result of illegal dumping at so-called critical points.District receives resources for Gas generated in Doña JuanaDuring the event, the Mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, and the director of the UAESP, Luz Amanda Camacho, toured the Biogás Colombia plant and verified the process that is carried out to convert the gases generated by buried waste into electrical energy.At the end of the tour, the manager of Biogás Colombia, Helmuth Gallego, presented the Mayor with a check for 2.475 billion pesos, product of the profits generated from the sale of energy during the first half of 2021. This money will be invested entirely in actions to improve the quality of life of the inhabitants in Doña Juana’s area of influence. 

South America

Pereira

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De-centralized wastewater treatment using local products and waste, turning them into by-products and creating jobs! Aimed at empowering women that are oppressed by strong sexist environments in very low income settlements. 

Paziflora

Empowerment of women in the informal settlement of Las Colonias near the city of Pereira, Colombia. Women are responsible for the recycling of waste, the waste water projects and social activities that reinforce their supportive behaviors in oppressing environments.

Ecolonias

<p>Wastewater in the community was simply dumped in people's backyards and would flow down to the nearby river. Vermifilters were constructed in the backyards of 2 houses, each connected to the wastewater flow of 2 households, to treat this water and create by-products from it. Local products were included in the construction of these backyard-sized filters, as well as concrete for these prototypes. The by-products are clean water usable for watering crops, fertilizer soil and compost from the worm-layer, and possibility of new income for the women of the community who take care of it, since they can sell this fertilizer to farmers or other interested parties, empowering their function in the community as well. </p>