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This collection was curated by the Circle Economy team from Knowledge Hub case studies for businesses, local and national governments around the world to find inspiration in practical examples of the circular economy. 

Visit the <a href="https://circle-economy.com" target="_blank">Circle Economy website</a> for more information and for more publications on the circular economy.

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Circle Economy

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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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Policy case

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

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

Open loop downcycling

Scalability

Roadmaps and strategies and targets

Societal Services

Eliminate waste by maximizing the recovery of resources at the end of the use phase so that they can be reintroduced into production processes


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Recover

'Inform' increases the overall levels of awareness and builds the necessary skills and knowledge around the circular economy to foster long-term change.

Inform

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)

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

Engage with the government on circular policies and programmes

Government collaboration

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

Social Impact

Producing basic and specialty chemicals, inks, agricultural chemical such as fertilisers and pesticides, plastics including packaging, and rubber

Chemical and Plastic

Refining and processing ores and producing ferrous and non-ferrous metal and glass products, including packaging

Metal and Glass

Participating in government programmes that support and advance the circular economy

Government programmes

Collection programmes that process products and parts for reuse or recycling within the same industry

Closed loop collection

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

Mobilise

Collection programmes that process products and parts for reuse or recycling within other industries

Open loop collection

Put enablers in place that allow circular businessesto grow, thrive and innovate (e.g. incubators, start-up funding, partnerships, innovation deals, business capacity building and testing groundsfor new business models).


Support circular and resource-efficient business innovations

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

Ecological Impact

Public-private partnerships

Transforming waste products into materials and lower value products within the same industry

Closed loop downcycling

Visions and Ambitions

Designing to reduce waste during production and use

Design out waste

Extracting and gathering wood through forestry and producing wood and paper products

Wood and Paper

The food system nourishes populations and employs 50% of the global workforce, but:
- it currently drives a quarter of the overshoot on the climate change planetary boundary due to its greenhouse gas (GHG) production, 
- animal farming alone uses over one-quarter of all land, equivalent to the size of the Americas,
- nearly a quarter of freshwater resources are lost due to rampant food waste, and
- it is the single largest driver of biodiversity loss.

A circular food system must address the whole value chain, from production to consumption to waste management. The four key solutions for the food system are:
- Put healthier, satiating foods first: Prioritise satiating and healthy foods with a lower environmental impact—ideally shifting calories from meat, fish, and dairy towards cereals, fruits, vegetables, and nuts.
- Go local, seasonal, and organic: Prioritise the production and consumption of local, seasonal, and organic produce (sometimes in combination with GMO to reduce pests and disease loss on crops), which can lead to a significantly reduced need for chemical inputs, fuels, and processing services that contribute to environmental impacts.
- Mainstream regenerative agriculture: Scale up agricultural practices that regenerate ecosystems, recirculate nutrients and sequester carbon by design. 
- End avoidable food waste: Minimise food loss and valorise waste following the food waste hierarchy along the supply chain and at the consumer level through better management of transport and storage, more refrigeration and smart planning, and technology at the consumer and food service levels.



🍏 Food Systems

Circular Economy in school programmes

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

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 agricultural products and processing them into food and beverageproducts for consumption

Agri/Food

Do better with less by using and supporting infrastructure, processes and products that are designed to minimize material, water and energy use and waste generation from production to end of use


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Reduce

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

Design for minimal waste

Communities

Mixed household waste - consisting of textiles, electronics, organic and other consumer goods - can be contaminated and difficult to separate, and hence limit the  recovery of materials and value.

Source separation reduces the upstream sorting cost and ensures that downstream recyclers receive clean feedstock, thus improving their ability to capture the value from post-consumer material streams. Source separation systems can take a variety of forms, such as providing a distributed network of collection points throughout a city for residents to drop off various types of waste materials. The most successful examples of this include: collection of electronics, plastics, waste oil, fabrics, metals, bulky goods, paper, cardboard, batteries, amongst others.

Local governments can support the implementation of the solution by developing and providing the necessary infrastructure throughout the city or engage in public-private partnerships to provide source separation systems. What is more, information campaigns can help to inform residents on which types of consumer goods can be recovered, and the most effective means of disposal. 


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👕📱  Source separation and collection systems for consumer goods 

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within the same industry

Valorise waste streams - closed loop

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

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

Use waste as a resource

Implement innovation programmes

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

Incentivise

Governments

Ensure that household and business waste is collected and appropriately sorted (by type, label, etc.) to allow for maximum recovery of value.


Collect and sort waste to facilitate recovery

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

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within other industries

Valorise waste streams - open loop

Extracting resources and processing them to produce materials for use bysociety

Materials and Fuels

Economic Frameworks

Reduced use of virgin materials and/or an increase of the use of secondary and bio-based materials

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

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

Increase Awareness

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

Local government

Processing and producing food and beverages for consumption

Food and Beverage

Impacts on the financial condition of a company, as well as the the economicconditions of its stakeholders and on economic systems at local, national, andglobal levels.

Economic Impact

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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 Hanoi is facing a big challenge in waste generation due to its fast population growth. It is estimated that Hanoi generates 5,500 to 6,000 tons of domestic waste every day, of which plastic accounts for 8-10%. This domestic waste is unsorted and is typically transported to landfills. This method accounts for 76% of waste disposal in Ho Chi Minh City and 95% of Hanoi’s waste disposal, with the remaining waste trated by inceneration methods or recycled at craft villages. Neither method brings environmental or economic benefits. Landfills waste land resources, state budgets and has social costs. The value of recyclable materials are wasted, ground and surface water are affected by secondary pollution and, in the long term, even land is affected. Incineration avoids some of these problems with landfills, but requires a huge upfront investment and involves a long implementation time. Dioxin emissions by incenerators also pose an environment problem. These projects also come under the objection of local residents. Accordingly, Vietnam discharges between 280,000 and 730,000 tons of plastic into the ocean per year, accounting for 6% of plastic waste in the world’s oceans (ranking fourth in the world, according to a UNEP workshop). Hanoi City implemented a “school milk” program, in which the City subidzes the price of milk as to ensure adequate dairy intake among the city’s children. This has caused the volume of discarded milk cartons from schools to be large. Milk boxes consist of 75% paper, 21% aluminium and 4% plastic. Although all these materials are recyclable, these cartons are disposed of in general waste bins and thus poured directly into landfills. Facing this situation, Hanoi City collaborated with Tetra Pak Vietnam (a major milk carton producer), Lagom Vietnam (a recycling company) and NHC Social Enterprise to launch a pilot program to facilitate the collection, sorting and recycling of milk cartons in kindergardens and primary schools throughout the city.  The program does not only recycle large quantities of milk cartons (minimizing the amount of waste for landfills), but also raises the pupils’ awareness of environmental issues and responsible waste separation habits. What is the project? How does it work? The Hanoi Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DONRE), Hanoi Department of Education and Training (DOET), Tetra Pak Vietnam Joint Stock Company, Lagom Vietnam Co., Ltd. and NHC Social Enterprises have established a program coordinating the process of collecting and recucling 100% of milk cartons among the registered schools in Hanoi. In particular, Tetra Pak Vietnam has a social responsibility to return its waste to resources by supporting the program’s communication initiatives. Through NHC Social Enterprises, the program has experts instructing teachers and pupils on how to best collect, classify, treat, and store milk cartons as to avoid unpleasant odors. Lagom Vietnam Co., Ltd are responsible for ensuring that 100% of milk cartons are processesd into other products such as paper, construction materials, etc… This pilot program will act as the foundation for Hanoi DONRE and DOET to develop a citywide program in all schools and residential areas in Hanoi city in the future. What are the CO2 reduction goals and achievements? Since the start of the program, 100 tons of milk cartons have been collected and the program is projected to reduce over 1,000 tons of milk cartons per year, which will help mitigate 111 tons of methane at landfills. The CO2 reduction goals of this programme sit at around 2.78 thousand tCO2e/year. Next Steps Judging from the preliminary results of the program, Hanoi will gradually expand to all 30 districts of the city in the coming years, which will cover over 4,000 schools. Simultaneously, Hanoi will continue to cimplement models of collecting, sorting and recycling plastic waste in offices, businesses and residential areas, in order to minimize the amount of waste discharged into the environment. Links to further Information  Official Programme Page Contact Details Ms. Le Thanh Thuy Project Management and Communication Division Hanoi Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Hanoi Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DONRE) Tel: +84 983376658 Fax +84 4 37833926 Email: thuyle.epa@gmail.com 

269 tons of milk cartons has been collected and recycled in the first 6 months of 2020 as a part of the initiatives towards the protection of schools’ environment.    As the morning of 5th november, the green schools conference themed “From milk carton collection to environmental initiatives” is held by Hanoi environment and natural resources, Tetra Pak company, LAGOM Viet Nam and Live&Learn center in Hanoi.       In the school year of 2020 – 2021, the program is expanded to twice as many schools as in the previous year, to benefit 1,600 primary schools and kindergartens    During the conference, the report on result in 2019-2020 school year of the project “Recycling school” consisted of the waste collection, sorting and recycling in schools’ enviroment and new program in the next year have been presented. Amid numberous initiatives, the collecting and recycling milk cartons program got attention since 2017 and has been applied in 1.200 preschools and primary schools in the school year of 2019-2020. Though the Covid-19 pandemic made this school year ended earlier than expected, 269 tons of milk cartons, equivalent to 27 millions of packs has been collected and recycled. In the next school year, the program aims to attract at least 1.600 preschool and primary school. In the frame of project, students learn how to treat milk cartons: put straws into the box, flatten and note stickers on the box,… The cartons would be delivered directly to a paper factory in Binh Duong once every 2 weeks where they would be recycled into new productions such as industrial papers, roofing sheets, ecological flat panels,…       35 excellent schools of the School Recycling Program and six schools that demonstrate the best practice of building a green school for clean air during the school year of 2019 – 2020 are honoured at the workshop    Speaking at the conference, Pham Xuan Tien, Deputy director of Hanoi Department of Education and Training emphasized: “Education of environmental awareness for students from preschool and primary age not only helps them to protect the environment at school but also inspire their families and beyond that we will have a generation conscious of protecting the environment in the future.” He hoped the programs such as this project would be multiplied in the society. Also, 35 schools were awarded in the conference for their excellent performance in collecting, sorting and recycling the milk cartons. 6 other schools were awarded for creating high quality of air in the school’s enviroment this year. Thu Thuy    

Hanoi

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Municipality of Hanoi

<p>To combat the amount of recyclable waste going to landfill, Hanoi City has collaborated with Tetra Pak Vietnam, Lagom Vietnam, and NHC Social Enterprise to launch a programme facilitating the collection, sorting, and recycling of milk cartons in schools around the city.</p>

Hanoi school milk recycling programme

The circular potential of organic wastes is dependent on the quality and low contamination rate of the residual stream that is collected. Food and organic wastes are difficult to sort and separate post-collection, and as such, collecting organic wastes through a mixed collection are often limited to incineration or landfill. Therefore, collecting organic wastes through a separate collection system is key to unlock potential high-value management practices, for example, composting and anaerobic digestion.

Due to the strong influence over the operation of local waste management systems, local governments have a key role in the provision of separate organic waste collection systems throughout the city. Collections systems can vary to suit the specific characteristics of particular neighbourhoods and areas of a city. For example, areas with detached homes have more space for bins, while for apartments with less space, a communal receptacle may be more appropriate. Communication campaigns can help to raise awareness and encourage participation of residents to separate their organic wastes. 


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🍏  Separate organic waste collection infrastructure

Conduct research

 Direct Financial Support

 Convene Towards Action

Cross-departmental collaboration and engagement

<p>A technical cooperation project (3R-HN) is creating a recycling community in Hanoi URENCO, where waste is separated and then collected or composted. Environment education activities complement urban planning efforts, while organic waste is used to produce fertiliser.</p>