Business case

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)

Providing public and private education and support services at any level or for any profession, and governmental and public administration services, including judicial, regulatory, and legislative activities, taxation, defence, public order and safety, immigration services, foreign affairs and the administration of government programmes

Education and Government Services

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

Construction Materials and Products

Transforming waste products into materials and lower value products within other industries

Open loop downcycling

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

Use recyclables

Implementation of strategies to collect recyclable waste in order to make it accessible and available to be used as an input in industrial processes (big or small). These are door-to-door collection (higher recovery rates but more costly intensive), drop-off schemes (cheaper but less effective, more common in cities with high housing density), or a combination of the two, and their corresponding incentive schemes. 

Collect recyclables

Infrastructure for citizens or cities to sort waste and extract recyclables, including incentives and pay-as-you-throw policies, as well as clear and targeted communications campaigns.

Sort recyclables

Collection of waste arising from commercial and industrial actors

Collect non residential

Collect organic waste generated by households and related businesses for use in, for example, composting and anaerobic digestion facilities.

Collect organic

Other

Impacts

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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

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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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  News item | 23-09-2016 | 17:10The Netherlands is famous for its bike paths, now it has opened the world’s first bike path made from recycled toilet paper.    Image: GWW totaal  The bike path runs from Friesian provincial capital Leeuwarden to the town of Stiens. A consortium of local authorities and construction companies (Wetterskip Fryslân (Friesland’s water company), Province of Friesland, Stowa, Jansma & Roelofs, Esha Infra Solutions and KNN Cellulose joined forces to use the fibres from paper to make asphalt.Waste water Every year, 180,000 tons of toilet paper is flushed down the loo. On average a ton of asphalt requires 3 kilos of fibre, the industry needs around 10 to 15 thousand tons a year. The consortium put its best minds together to set up a process to recover the cellulose from waste water so it can be added to bitumen to prevent so-called “dripping”. In other words by increasing the viscosity of the asphalt it lasts longer. This unique process is a step towards making road construction more sustainable.
 Green Deal At the same time, everyone benefits from the circular economy. The water company finds a profitable outlet for getting rid of its slib - normally a costly business. And for the other partners in the circle, less energy and raw materials are used and therefore costs are reduced. The consortium is planning to construct two more bike paths from toilet paper.Water hub It’s no accident that Leeuwarden is the location for this pioneering technique as it is home to the European Technical Water Hub center WaterCampus and hosts the annual Watermatch conference.
 The project Van Afval naar Asfalt is part of the Green Deal made between the Ministries of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure and the Environment in 2014.

Wetterskip Fryslan

Province of Friesland

Stowa

Jansma & Roelofs

Esha Infra Solutions

KNN Cellulose

<p>Leeuwarden has opened the world's first bike path made from recycled toilet paper. A consortium of local authorities and construction companies (Wetterskip Fryslan - Friesland's water company, Province of Friesland, Stowa, Jansma &amp; Roelofs, Esha Infra Solutions and KNN Cellulose) joined forces to use the fibres from paper to make asphalt. Read more at:</p>