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Circle Economy and ICLEI have partnered up to initiate the go to knowledge hub of case studies about the circular economy in cities. The Cities Collection is a repository of case studies that demonstrate the role of cities in the circular transition, and includes policies, business cases and research articles. Cases in the Collection flow into an ecosystem of digital products which support users in transitioning cities to circularity, for example [Ganbatte](https://ganbatte.world/cities/) and <a href="https://circulars.iclei.org/" target="_blank">ICLEI Circulars</a>, both part of the <a href="https://circulars.iclei.org/circle-lab-for-cities/" target = _blank">Circle Lab for Cities Programme.</a>

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Circular Cities

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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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Policy case

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

Ecological Impact

Impacts on the social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families.

Social Impact

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

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

Save Water (SDG6)

Societal Services

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

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

Water and Sewage

Ensure renewable, reusable, non-toxic resources are utilised as materials and energy in an efficient way

Prioritise regenerative resources

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

Replace freshwater with less impactful alternatives and enact water efficiency measures

Regenerative water

Engage with the government on circular policies and programmes

Government collaboration

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

Alternative water use

Enacting measures that optimise water use

Water efficiency

Participating in government programmes that support and advance the circular economy

Government programmes

Measures to drain accumulating rainwater from rooftops, roads or other public surfaces and channel it into containers for multipurpose use. These include watering plants and crops, as an input into manufacturing processes, the establishment of public water features, or the introduction back into plumbing systems, Uses may include the application of filtration and treatment systems when needed. 

Manage rainwater

A circular water economy reduces water consumption, reuses and recycles water and wastewater, and recovers materials, including heat and minerals, from water and wastewater to not only mitigate greenhouse gas emissions but also enhance resilience to climate change. A circular water economy preserves the health of water ecosystems using context specific approaches. 



WATER

'Manage' influences the use and function of physical and material elements within the urban environment. 

Manage

Infrastructure

Develop regenerative infrastructure

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

Mobilise

Visions and Ambitions

Roadmaps and strategies and targets

'Incentivise' sends market signals and support to businesses, citizens and governments to promote certain activities.

Incentivise

Public-private partnerships

Develop infrastructure to support resource cycling

Economic Frameworks

Grow countries globally account for 55% of all raw material extraction and 52% of the material footprint, while housing around 37% of the global population.

These are larger Southeast Asian countries and countries in Latin America and Northern Africa, as well as those with an economy in transition in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

Examples include :
- China
- Indonesia
- Brazil
- Mexico
- Vietnam
- Myanmar
- Egypt, ...

Large contribution to the overshoot of planetary boundaries—largely due to the consumptions of local materials in higher-
income (Shift) countries: these countries contribute 50% of climate change, 62% of nitrogen, 60% of phosphorus, 53% of freshwater use and 42% of land use change.

To find out what country profile your country belongs to, explore [this interactive story](https://circularity-gap.world) and search for your country on the final map.

Grow

Local government

**Harmonize with nature** by promoting infrastructure, production systems and sourcing that allows natural ecosystems to thrive




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Regenerate

Prioritize solutions that use the power of functioning ecosystems as infrastructure to provide natural services to benefit society and the environment; consider nature-based replacements for grey infrastructure.

Prioritise renewable resources 

Promote solutions inspired and supported by nature

The built environment, including housing, commercial buildings, and the necessary infrastructure for mobility, is essential for our livelihoods, but:
- the extraction of minerals used to produce construction materials is responsible for a quarter of global land use change,
- approximately 40% of global GHG emissions can be attributed to buildings’ construction, use and demolition, and
- construction and demolition processes drive nearly one-third of all material consumption. 

Making the built environment more circular must prioritise a heavy reduction in material use—while also closing the loop on materials and bringing secondary and renewable material choices to the fore. Our four key solutions for the built environment are:
- Make the most of what already exists: Make the most of existing materials by reusing, repurposing, upgrading and renovating following circular approaches. Where new builds are needed, use secondary materials and be as efficient as possible with urban planning solutions that follow circular design principles so that buildings can be reused, repurposed, and easily disassembled in the future.
- Be as energy efficient as possible: From the design phase, utilise circular strategies to create material- and energy efficient buildings. Couple these designs with a rollout of clean energy solutions, and prioritise energy-efficient appliances and retrofitting. 
- Utilise secondary materials: Maximise the high-value reuse of buildings and components where possible. Ideally, enable the utilisation of construction and demolition outputs and ensure that as much of it as possible is recycled to avoid the need for virgin materials, such as sand and gravel.
- Prioritise circular materials and approaches: Transition to using renewable wood, timber or cross-laminated timber instead of steel and concrete, or move to other locally available materials. Utilise mainstream modular construction and prioritise lightweight frames and structures to reduce cement and steel use, as well as green roofs where possible.



🏢 Built Environment

Businesses

Communities

Governments

Cities worldwide are facing significant water-related challenges, including urban water runoffs, flooding, reduced water quality and severe water scarcity—exacerbated by rapid urbanisation and more frequent extreme weather events. On top of this, urban water runoff continues to be a major cause of water pollution in urban areas, carrying trash, bacteria, and other pollutants through gutters and stormwater systems into local waterways, typically without treatment.

City governments can pursue a “sponge city” approach by redesigning the urban fabric and integrating blue and green infrastructure (BGI) (e.g. rain gardens, permeable pavements, storage ponds, etc.) along traditional grey infrastructure (e.g. pipe networks, storage tanks, flood walls). This can help to absorb, store, filter and purify these water flows, in turn replenishing aquifers, reducing the need for expanding grey water management and minimising flood risk, while also reducing the heat island effect. 

Cities can do so by, for example, integrating requirements for BGI into municipal urban planning rules for newly built up areas of city districts, industrial parks and development zones, and integrating sponge city building requirements into municipal urban planning rules. Then, local governments could also strengthen collaboration between all relevant stakeholders—from real estate developers to engineers, to water-utility organisations—to identify locally relevant opportunities for sponge cities. 


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💧  Blue and green infrastructure for sustainable urban drainage

Harvesting and utilising the rainwater harvesting that falls across a city can reduce the pressure on water local reserves and catchments, while at the same time enabling stormwater runoff and providing water for human use. This practice is not new, it has long been used in many parts of the world.

Cities can introduce various water saving infrastructure solutions that harvest rainwater, from roofs, paved and unpaved areas, parks, and other buildings—either to use it or to replenish local aquifers. Reworking city-wide master plans that promote policy alignment is vital, as well as the involvement and cooperation of the communities vital for implementation.  Cities can also incentivise their citizens to capture and reuse rainwater through subsidy schemes. This in turn can reduce costs for the city in maintaining the local water system.


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💧 Rainwater harvesting

Regenerate strategies phase out hazardous or toxic materials and processes and substitute them with regenerative biomass resources. A circular economy aims to mimic natural cycles—by shifting to more regenerative farming practices, for example—while also maximising the share of circular biomass that enters the economy. Regeneration can happen both at the systems level (by designing regenerative processes) as well as at the product level (by switching synthetic to organic fertilisers, for example).

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

Urban Opportunities

Whilst no two countries are the same, there are still obvious similarities between some of them, with discernible development patterns and parallels in evidence. Common problems and shared solutions help place unique country identities and individual issues in context.

Whilst this classification is far from clear-cut and exhibits some overlap, it does underline how the discourse on transitioning to a circular economy needs to account for both differences and commonalities, if we are to arrive at a more strategic and instructive analysis. It also allows to highlight a set of key themes that are likely to be central to the countries that fall under the respective profiles. 

Country profiles (Build, Grow, Shift)

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A framework to distinguish between different country profiles and their circular transition needs.

Browse case studies by type of implementing stakeholder.

Implementing stakeholders

The Circular City Actions Framework provides urban changemakers with five complementary strategies they can use to start working towards a more circular system. 

The framework is action-based to provide users with concrete strategic directions and showcase the desired outcomes of each strategy. 
The framework consists of five complementary **strategies**, under which **sub-strategies** provide further detail. Finally, each sub-strategy consists of a diversity of tangible **solutions** which are framed in relation to key thematic areas. 

Note: solutions are currently focused on:
- 🍏 **Food systems**
- 🏢  **Built environment**
- 👕📱  **Consumer goods**
- ⚡ **Energy Systems**
- 🚌 **Mobility Systems**
- 💧 **Water Systems**

More thematic areas are coming soon...

'Click through each of the five strategy cards below to explore the framework and circular economy case studies in more depth!'



This framework was developed in collaboration with ICLEI, Metabolic and Ellen MacArthur Foundation with support from the MAVA Foundation. Read more about it [here]( https://circulars.iclei.org/action-framework/). 



Circular City Actions Framework

An action-based framework for local governments working towards circular cities

Thematic Areas

City Stakeholders

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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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 When Maria Isabel Contreras and her husband moved to Mexico City’s Iztapalapa district, 30 years ago, water was not an issue. But as the district urbanized, the taps began to dry up. Today, the nine-person household — four adults and five children — receives three hours of continuous supply of murky, brown water each day, before the water runs out.  This translates into a daily struggle for the Contreras household, and she is quick to enumerate all the tactics used to get by. “We inserted water savers in all the toilets,” she said, “and use the bathtub as an extra storage container.” The family also collects extra water from showers by placing buckets next to their feet, and they reuse water from the laundry machine to clean the floors.  The Contreras are not alone; millions of people in Mexico City lack access to running water. According to UN-backed research, Mexico City — along with Cairo, Bangalore, Cape Town, and seven other megalopolises — will run out of water by 2030. Those who suffer from water shortages today pay for private water companies to fill up their tanks — a service that Contreras can’t afford.  The irony is, water in the city abounds. Set on a mile-and-a-half-high basin and surrounded by mountains, the city — which used to be integrated with a system of lakes and rivers — receives more yearly rainfall than London. But, due to urbanization policies implemented since the Spanish conquest and strengthened by the city’s mid-twentieth century growth, the resource has been squandered and mismanaged, profoundly affecting the ecosystem and the survival of its millions of inhabitants.  Today, most of the city’s water is collected from underground wells or pumped from hundreds of miles away through inefficient and costly infrastructure. As for rainwater, it mixes mostly with air and ground pollutants and ends up in the sewer.  Earlier this year, Contreras found out about a government program to install rainwater-collecting systems in the houses of Iztapalapa and Xochimilco, another poor district with chronic water problems. The new mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, an environmental scientist, promised to install 100,000 of these rainwater harvesting systems in the rooftops of Iztapalapa by the end of her six-year-tenure.  During the kick-off event in Iztapalapa — where her party has had strong support during the last elections — Sheinbaum said that the city is investing twice as much as previous governments in solving the water problem, which also means looking for leaks in the system and finding more water sources. The rainwater project is a 200 million-pesos ($10 million) program, a small part of the city’s overall budget, but according to Sheinbaum, a more efficient way of dealing with part of the problem: “We want to solve our debt to Iztapalapa, the lack of water to the area.” she said.  To install the harvesting systems Sheinbaum is partnering with Isla Urbana, an NGO that has been installing these systems since 2009. If they are successful, over half a million people could survive for up to seven months without accessing the urban water grid. “It could set up a new precedence in urban governance,” Enrique Lomnitz, one of Isla Urbana’s founders, says, “with whole areas of a city no longer depending on the government for daily access to the resource.” The rain-harvesting idea was conceived together with Renata Fermont as part of Lomnitz’s graduation project at the Rhode Island School of Design. Fermont and Lomnitz conducted interviews and research on the needs of low-income communities in Mexico City´s periphery, which led to the insight of a fundamentally flawed paradigm of water management in the valley.  “We realized that the current model was drawing out two or three times more water than what it was putting in,” he says, “and that changing this outdated model through infrastructure investment was a costly endeavor — so we turned our eyes on granularity.” What this means is implementing cheap (around $700) systems in each house without having to drill underground to change the old and inefficient infrastructure.  The first system was set up using spare parts, in the house of a woman named Clara Gaitan. According to Lomnitz, after installing the rainwater harvester Gaitan — who already had a 30,000-liter water tank in the cellar (a common feature of houses in Mexico City) — managed to live without having to use the water grid for seven months. In order to gain a better sense of the needs, Lomnitz moved from his house to a house in the periphery where he lived for four years. Those first systems served as a proof of concept, and, as more people got involved, they started drawing attention. In 2011, the Mexico City district of Tlalpán, then under Sheinbaum’s command, took notice and asked Isla Urbana to install 500 systems. This was the first time Isla Urbana had to deal with bigger logistics and learned to install and train the families receiving the system on a massive scale.  Today the patented system is highly adaptable to the conditions of each house. The most basic packages use special drains to collect water from the roof and run it through a patented filter called Tlaloque 200, which retains most of the solids, and through a leaf-filter. More sophisticated versions include a carbon filter, which reduces the bad taste, and a water purifier.  Although the final output in most cases (a costly purifying filter is not installed in many of the systems) is not potable water, it is water that can be used for cleaning the house, laundry, flushing toilets and showering. Since its founding, Isla Urbana has been able to provide over 50,000 people with clean water (in some cases, year-round). One Wednesday morning I went to visit the installation of the filters in Iztapalapa. Javier Hernandez — who, together with his brothers Gabino and Alejandro, has worked for Isla Urbana since 2011 — drove me around. Hernandez, who is now head of installations in Iztapalapa (his brother is head in Xochimilco) has overseen the installation of 11,000 systems. In the current initiative, he leads 15 brigades and installed 36 systems a day; since April, the Hernandez brothers have installed 3,500 systems. Hernandez drove me to a house that had a system installed a couple of weeks ago. “We have just received the first rain, and the container was overflowing,” Eugenio Reyes Lopez, who lives with nine family members, told me.  Reyes, unlike Contreras, has had almost no running water throughout his thirty years of life in Iztapalapa. He receives water on Thursdays and Fridays, if at all. He has a big container in the basement of his house where he collects all the water that he can to last for the week. “It is yellow and rusty,” he told me, “from the shitty water that comes out.” As we toured their house Reyes pointed to a series of barrels stacked outside, also used as storage for water. He lifted one lid to reveal a greenish substance: “This is the water that comes out of the system,” he told me. Then he revealed another barrel containing clear water “This one,” he said, smiling, “is the one that came from above.”  At Maria Contrera’s house, one brigade was busy installing a new system. Ismael Garcia, her husband, was walking back and forth, talking excitedly with the installation crew. “This is fabulous, its excellent,” he told me.“The streets turn to rivers when it rains here, imagine how many liters of rainwater are going down the drain, and now, into our house!” 

         
  Mexico is experiencing a water crisis that is becoming more severe every year, with millions of people lacking decent and secure access to water.


      

  With a rainwater harvesting system, a family can benefit by having a sustainable source of water during part, or all, of the year.


      

  We are dedicated to designing and installing systems to capture the rain in Mexico, particularly in communities where people lack any access to water.


           Isla Urbana is working to demonstrate the positive impact that rainwater harvesting can have in Mexico.
          Capturing rainwater reduces the flow of stormwater into the drains, mitigating the flooding that currently affects Mexico City.


          Capturing rainwater during the rainy season can reduce the amount of energy used for pumping and transporting water to homes.

          A rainwater harvesting system in Mexico City provides a family with water independence for 5 to 8 months per year, and in some cases the entire year!



          By harvesting the rainwater as it falls during the wet season, we could reduce the pressure on our rivers and aquifers by allowing them to recharge.

                   

Mexico City

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Isla Urbana is a project dedicated to contributing to water sustainability in Mexico through rainwater harvesting.

Isla Urbana

Mexico City is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. 
Mexico City is one of the most important cultural and financial centers in the world. It is located in the Valley of Mexico in the high central plateau, at an altitude of 2,240 meters (7,350 ft). The city has 16 boroughs, which are in turn divided into neighborhoods or colonias.

Municipality of Mexico City

Millions of residents of Mexico City lack access to running water—and those that do have access receive murky water for only a few hours a day. It is predicted that Mexico City will entirely run out of water by 2030, despite abundant water within the city from strong and frequent rainfall.Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum—an environmental scientist who also sits on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—intends to combat this growing issue through several fronts in the Local Climate Action Strategy (ELAC) 2020-2040 and the Climate Action Programme of Mexico City (PACCM) 2020-2026. The implementation of rainwater harvesting systems (SCALL) are positioned as one of the strategic lines of action in the design of the ELAC and the PACCM, in order to reduce the water vulnerability of Mexico City and strengthen the participatory and inclusive construction of resilience.