Business case

Producing building materials and finished and semi-finished building products for construction

Construction Materials and Products

Transforming waste products, materials for reuse within other industries

Open loop upcycling

Make collected and sorted recyclables available for use by citizens, small businesses up to large scale industrial processes. 

Use recyclables

Industries

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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

Urban Opportunities

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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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Ecopneus

<p>Ecopneus in collaboration with Matrec has a catalogue of products that are made through the recovery and reuse of end-of-life tyres. Each product and powder / granule of the catalog is presented with a card containing: product images, description, applications, technical data sheets, environmental information, certifications, company name, contacts. This catalog aims to be a national reference with the aim to promote the knowledge of end-of-life tyre products for the B2B business environment, allow architects and businesses to interact with the catalog to know the recycled rubber products present at national level, disseminate recycled rubber properties and properties to create new proposals and design solutions, disseminate national and international projects and applications of recycled rubber manufactured items, etc. Read more at:</p>