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Boosting sustainable food production with Singapore's first community-based circular ecosystem 

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This collection features a selection of case studies, based on the global *Circularity Gap Reports*, that can mitigate climate breakdown by reducing virgin material consumption, waste and greenhouse gas emissions. The latest **[Circularity Gap Report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023#download)** reveals that the global economy is now only 7.2% circular and outlines how circular solutions across four sectors can bring global planetary boundaries back within safe limits. 

In the six years of the *Circularity Gap Report*, the global economy has extracted and used unprecedented amounts of materials. The first edition of the *Report *in 2018 found that global circularity was 9.1% and it has decreased every year since—leaving a Circularity Gap of over 90%. If this trend continues, we will have to find more and better solutions to combat the negative effects of climate change. This is why we have identified case studies from across the globe—based on the needs of society and planetary health—that serve as real-world examples of the circular economy in action.

Circle Economy is a not-for-profit organisation working to accelerate the circular transition. Through the *Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative*, our mission is to deliver an annual global Circularity Metric that measures the state of the world economy and identifies key levers to transition to global circularity. With nature as our guide, we work alongside cross-sector stakeholders from academia, businesses, NGOs and governments to provide a powerful combination of practical and scalable interventions that transform circular opportunities into realities. 


To learn more about these interventions to accelerate the circular transition, read the latest [Circularity Gap Report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023#download), as well as previous editions of the global [Circularity Gap Reports](https://www.circularity-gap.world/global).

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Global Circularity Gap Report 2023

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Policy case

Impact on the availability of resources as well as their effect on living organisms, ecosystems, and components of the environment.

Ecological Impact

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

Increase Awareness

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

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

Innovation

Scalability

Producing agricultural products and processing them into food and beverageproducts for consumption

Agri/Food

Societal Services

Utilise waste streams as a source of secondary resources and recover waste for reuse and recycling

Use waste as a resource

Consider opportunities to create greater value and align incentives that build on the interaction between products and services

Rethink the business model

Account for the systems perspective during the design process, to use the right materials, to design for appropriate lifetime and to design for extended future use

Design for the future

Work together throughout the supply chain, internally within organisations and with the public sector and communities to increase transparency and create joint value

Team up to create joint value

'Mobilise' sets the direction of and builds momentum towards long-term change, while also determining how this direction is determined and governed.

Mobilise

 Develop research, structure knowledge, encourage innovation networks and disseminate findings with integrity


Strengthen and advance knowledge

The second biggest category in terms of resource use is the need for nutrition. Agricultural products such as crops and livestock require 21.8 billion tonnes yearly. Food products have short lifecycles in our economy, being consumed quickly after production.



Nutrition

- Organic food, seasonal & fresh food
- Eliminate the need for chemical fertilisers and pesticide
- Regional-local food
- Produce your own food
- Sustainable biomass certifications
- Shift towards locally produced food in the hospitality sector with a policy focus on national food self-sufficiency.                   

Saving: 2.07 Gt emissions and 3.40 Gt material use

🍎 Sustainable food production

Cycle strategies aim to cycle and reuse materials at their highest value: they maximise the volume of secondary materials re-entering the economy, ultimately minimising the need for virgin material inputs and therefore also narrowing flows. Of course, virgin materials will always be needed to a degree: all materials degrade and can’t be cycled infinitely, use energy, and require blending with virgin materials to maintain strength and functionality.

Cycle

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

Policies

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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

The framework consists of 21 complementary interventions, across six scenarios - one for each of the six societal needs we model. These interventions can mitigate climate impact by curbing GHG emissions

Note: interventions are currently focused on:
- 🏠 Housing 
- 🍎 Nutrition
- 🚗 Mobility
- 👚📺 Consumables
- 👩‍⚕️👨‍⚕️ Healthcare
-  🔊 Communication

These 21 interventions are spread across six societal needs and wants, with a set of solutions. Within these solutions are strategies on ’how to get there'.  

The framework moves beyond incremental action and provides solutions that will require behavioral change (dietary shifts towards less meat consumption, for example) and the adoption of state-of-the-art technologies in the industry to mitigate emissions in hard-to-abate sectors (such as steel manufacturing). It illustrates how continued globalisation can benefit from the uptake of digital solutions. The combined interventions showcase the mitigation potential that begins where the current country pledges end; illustrating the additional impact our interventions can bring to the NDCs. In short, the interventions provide input for a more profound fundamental transformation than the more current pathways that make up the vast majority of NDCs. 

Together, the combined interventions can almost double the current global Circularity Metric of 8.6%, bringing it to 17%. 

This results in:
• Shrinking global material use and extraction by 28%. 
• Cutting global GHG emissions by 39%—fully closing the Emissions Gap as defined in our report and taking into account the updated NDCs.
• Allowing the world to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping at 1.5-degrees of warming by 2032.

*This framework was developed in the Circularity Gap Report 2021. Read more about it [here](https://www.circle-economy.com/resources/circularity-gap-report-2021)*






Global Circularity Gap Report

An intervention-based framework for nations and stakeholders working towards circular countries

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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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           September 13, 2021 at 5:00 AM          
SINGAPORE - An initiative in Tampines Park to convert food waste into nutrients for use in vegetable and fish farming is set to be extended to other parts of the town.
The produce from the farms is currently undergoing food safety checks, said the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) in response to queries from The Straits Times.
Possible sites at blocks 106, 270 and 412 are being explored for their suitability, said the Tampines Town Council. Known as Sustainability @ Tampines Park, the community-based initiative is a circular ecosystem with a black soldier fly facility, a vertical high-tech farm for vegetables such as lettuce and nai bai, as well as a tilapia fish farm.
Residents can contribute their food waste to the black soldier fly facility, where the insect larvae act as a decomposer and break down the food into frass, which can be used as a fertiliser at the vegetable farm.
The insect larvae - being a good source of protein nutrients - can then be fed to the tilapia. The project, launched in December last year, is a collaboration between the town council, SFA, sustainable technology firm Netatech, environmental consultancy Otolith Enrichment and Tampines Residents' Network. SFA said the project highlights its "Grow Local" food basket, as part of its strategies to use more spaces in land-scarce Singapore for food farming.
This move comes amid the nation's goals to produce more food locally - 30 per cent by 2030 - to boost its food security, and cut waste to extend the lifespan of the Semakau Landfill.
It said the feedback from residents has been encouraging so far and that the Tampines Town Council is planning to extend the project to other parts of the town as part of its efforts to become a model Eco-Town by 2025. Madam Lau Soo Peng, 59, who is the site's facility manager, said many residents have made it a habit to bring their food waste for recycling on a regular basis.
She added that quite a number of students have also been helping out at the facility as volunteers.
     
SFA said trials are still ongoing with the vendors to ensure that the tilapia and vegetables are safe for consumption.
"We are also assessing other factors such as the feed's nutritional value and the amount required for each feed," it added.
     
Mr Jonathan Poh, director of Otolith Enrichment, told ST that the food waste undergoes two rounds of checks for mould before it is fed to the black soldier flies.
"Despite the measures put in place, we are unable to tell if food waste is contaminated with heavy metals, toxins, pathogens... This area is covered by SFA, where the black soldier fly larvae, frass and produce (vegetables and fish) are collected for periodic food safety testing," he said.
He added that Otolith's role in the project as main facilitator and integrator sees it engaging the community through volunteer management and food waste contribution.
     
The project in Tampines is using black soldier fly eggs supplied by the National University of Singapore (NUS), said Assistant Professor Nalini Puniamoorthy of the Department of Biological Sciences.
"These flies were locally collected and selectively bred for rearing in urban spaces. Since 2018, they have been 'trained' to convert NUS food waste from residential halls, and are thus generally able to handle the residential food waste in Tampines," she added.
     
Since the launch of the Tampines project, NUS has supplied about 10 million eggs which have been used to convert more than five tonnes of food waste that would have been incinerated otherwise.
"Food safety is dependent on both the substrate (food waste) as well as the flies themselves. The quality of food substrates in Singapore is actually high, which is why it is a shame to lose this nutrient bank to incineration," she added.
Mr Poh said that besides tilapia fish, it is also possible to farm other freshwater species such as the Jade perch, Marble goby or even the giant freshwater prawn using the black soldier fly larvae.
Plans are also in the pipeline for Otolith to set up decentralised black soldier fly facilities in areas such as the East Coast and Bishan, he added.
            

      Sustainability has to be rooted in a community effort for it to blossom within the hearts of Tampines residents. With the launch of Sustainability @ Tampines Park on 5 December, Tampines is well on its way to becoming the first Eco-Town in Singapore.  MPs for Tampines GRC, Minister for Social and Family Development, Second Minister for Health and Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs, Mr Masagos Zulkifli, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Health, Dr Koh Poh Koon, Mayor of North East District, Mr Desmond Choo, Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Transport, Mr Baey Yam Keng and Chairman of Tampines Town Council (TTC), Ms Cheng Li Hui officiated the launch event. Mr Desmond Tan, Minister of State for Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment, was Guest Adviser at the event.       Our MPs and the Guest Adviser toured the sites of Singapore's first community-based circular ecosystem, which includes a tilapia fish farm, a vertical high-tech farm for leafy vegetables such as lettuce, bayam spinach and nai bai, as well as a black soldier fly (BSF) facility.  Residents can now contribute food waste, which is broken down by BSF larvae into frass to fertilise the pesticide-free and organic vegetables grown in the vertical farm at Block 146 of Tampines. The nutrition-packed larvae are then fed to the tilapias. Finally, residents can buy vegetables and tilapia using the 'green currency' accumulated from contributing food waste. Also showcased at the launch was a robotic arm capable of sorting harvested vegetables into lockers for residents' collection.              "We need to make sure sustainability is felt on the ground. Only then can we build circularity into what we normally throw away. We usually take, consume, and throw away. Whereas in this case, we consume, put back into the system, and the food that we could have wasted becomes food again," Mr Masagos explained.  Back to TEMPO 

Singapore

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 Singapore Ministry of National Development

Netatech

Apollo Aquaculture Group

Otolith Enrichment

Temasek Foundation

National Environment Agency

Singapore Food Agency

EM Services Pte Ltd

<p>Singapore's first community-based circular ecosystem features a black soldier fly facility, tilapia fish farm and a vertical high-tech farm in the heart of the Tampines neighbourhood. Known as Sustainability@Tampines Park, this circular initiative is designed to engage residents to contribute their food waste as a way to grow produce locally. This project was launched in December 2020, as a move towards Singapore's goal of producing 30% of nutritional needs locally by 2030. Upon a successful pilot, the project will be replicated in other neighbourhoods within Singapore.</p>