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European Circle Economy Stakeholder Platform

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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

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

Increase Awareness

Impact on the quantity or quality of jobs, and shifts in the labour market

Jobs

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

Efficiency gains on operations or transactions either through cultural or technological shifts

Productivity

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

Innovation

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

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

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

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)

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

Save Water (SDG6)

Reduced use of fossil fuel energy sources and/or increased use of renewable energy

Reduce Energy Consumption

Contributing to the improvement of biodiversity including species diversity, total number of protected species, and ecosystem health

Biodiversity

Producing transporation equipment and providing services for thetransportation of goods and people

Transportation and Logistics

Producing building materials and providing services to create residential and non-residential infrastructure and real estate


Construction and Infrastructure

Providing electricity and gas services, including traditional and renewable energy generation, natural and manufactured gas and operating gas networks

Energy Utilities and Independent Power Producers

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

Water and Sewage

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

Providing air, water, rail, and land transportation for passengers, such as airlines, airports, ferries, cruise-ships, tour boat operators, marine ports, railways, train stations, tour bus operators, vehicle rental, and taxi companies, travel agencies and related services

Passenger Transport Services

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

Construction Materials and Products

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

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

Alternative water use

Enacting measures that optimise water use

Water efficiency

Enacting measures that optimise energy use

Energy efficiency

Using renewable energy like solar, wind, etc. or renewable fuels like biomass, etc.

Renewable energy, fuels

Engaging in discussions with industry stakeholders to share circular economy best practices and push the industry towards greater circularity

Guidance, dialogue with industry stakeholders

Working together with customers to jointly create products fit for them

Co-creation

Engaging in discussions with customers to educate and raise awareness of the circular economy and explore circular opportunities together

Customer dialogue, marketing 

Engaging in discussions with government bodies and policymakers to push for regulations that support the circular economy

Advocacy for circular economy policy

Participating in government programmes that support and advance the circular economy

Government programmes

Facilitate discussions and meetings between internal team members to identify circular opportunities

Dialogue with internal stakeholders

Provide guidance or professional training to educate employees to use circular economy principles

Training on the circular economy

Developing or utilising online platforms to enable circular economy opportunities through information, product or service offering

Online platforms

Roadmaps and strategies and targets

Site planning for circular material use

Innovation-oriented public procurement

Develop circular criteria for public procurement of assets

Develop infrastructure to support resource cycling

Includes a variety of actions (e.g. campaigns, information sharing, public events) that encourage city residents and visitors to build sustainable practices into their daily lives

Enable sustainable lifestyles

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

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

Process waste into valuable industrial inputs or consumer products; distribute processed waste to users.

Process waste and ensure its re-entry into industry at its highest value

Cities consume about 75% of global energy and emit between 50% and 60% of global greenhouse gases (UN-Habitat). To reduce the negative impact of their energy consumption, cities need to shift away from fossil fuels and move towards renewable energy sources. Such a shift will help cities work towards their climate change mitigation and adaptation action plans. Renewable energy technologies such as wind, water, solar, and geothermal can also help improve access to energy in vulnerable and marginalised neighbourhoods through, for example, decentralised, off-grid solutions.

Renewable energy technologies can harvest the energy in nature’s processes, such as wind, and solar radiation and geothermal heat, that can be replenished within a human lifespan. In contrast, fossil fuels are materials that are not replenished within a human lifespan and are combusted for energy, losing the fuel material and resulting in emissions.

Local governments can develop sustainable energy plans, considering different energy resources and requirements, to develop a robust strategy for the development of renewable energy technologies and infrastructure throughout the city. They can also institute specific legislation and tax systems to regulate energy production and consumption, incentivise research and development of cleaner, more efficient technologies. Via Power Purchase Agreements cities can buy renewable energy from green energy providers and fix the price in order to provide security to financial institutions to finance renewable energy infrastructure. Furthermore, increasing awareness and facilitating capacity-building on planning urban sustainable energy projects can help the uptake of clean energy across the city by different stakeholders—from citizens to businesses and institutions. Facilitating collaboration, then, will be crucial, since private companies operate most of the world’s energy systems.


⚡ Energy Systems

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

The demand for transport is rising globally—but current modes are heavily material- and fossil-fuels-intensive. Emissions from the transport system could grow by 60% by 2050, and transport is the number-one user of oil worldwide. GHG emissions result not only in warming global temperatures, but also in ocean acidification, which has severe consequences for entire ecosystems and further destabilises our climate. The transport system also drives land-use change and biodiversity loss through the development of infrastructure—also releasing harmful pollutants into the ocean. Key circular solutions:

- Embrace and enable car-free lifestyles
- Invest in high-quality public transport
- Rethink unnecessary air travel
- Electrify remaining vehicles

🚌 Mobility Systems

Governments

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 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

The underlying idea of the Strategy for the Transition to the Circular Economy in the Municipality of Maribor, as well as the Wcycle project, is its to have an own innovative model as a system for managing all the resources available in the Municipality of Maribor and the wider urban area.
The model is based on the operation of enterprises that are predominantly publicly-owned and already provide public services for residents. They are thus the city’s bottlenecks that until now have not functioned as a connecting link, which is a fundamental principle in the transition from linear to circular economy. 
Only close cooperation between public companies, citizens, industry and local self-government can lead to a successful interconnected system that optimises resources and results - economic, environmental and social. This is a long-term project that provides development-oriented efficient management of resource flows in local and regional environments.
The purpose of the Strategy and Wcycle project discussed is cross-sectoral cooperation in handling, processing, re-use and development of resources, which deals with the circular economy in Maribor in seven selected sectors (i.e pillars or circles).
The positive consequences of these practices are the emergence of new business opportunities for the Municipality of Maribor, the people and the economy, the creation of high-quality, mainly green jobs, new added value and a fresh economic boost.


The WCYCLE Maribor project is about an innovative urban circular economy system, offering a new business and economic model for the city in the field of efficient resource management. It complements the principles of sustainable mobility and the co-operative economy. 
In 2017, five utility companies from Maribor established the WCYCLE Institute for circular economy. It serves as a platform for cross-sector project development and for the exchange of knowledge and good practices at local, regional and international level. Subsequently, the City Council approved a city circular economy strategy prepared by WCYCLE. 
Various local stakeholders have been included in project activities in order to support citizens' initiatives. The implementation of these projects is also leading to new jobs. Public events are being organised in order to promote the circular economy. 
Supporting entrepreneurs and innovation includes the implementation of several EU projects with a range of stakeholders. The activities are shared on EU web platforms in order to transfer knowledge.


Maribor

Municipality of Maribor

In 2018, the Municipality of Maribor launched its Strategy for the Transition to the Circular Economy, its own innovative model for managing all the resources available in the municipality and the wider urban area, as well as the Wcycle project, an action project to establish circularity of waste, unused space, wastewater, lost energy, and improvement of the social environment.The model is based on the operation of enterprises that are predominantly publicly owned and already provide public services for residents. The purpose of the Strategy and Wcycle project is cross-sectoral cooperation in handling, processing, re-use and development of resources, which deals with the circular economy in Maribor in seven selected sectors (i.e pillars or circles). The positive consequences of these practices are the emergence of new business opportunities for the Municipality of Maribor, the people and the economy, the creation of high-quality, mainly green jobs, new added value and a fresh economic boost.

Wcycle - A Strategy for the Transition to Circular Economy in the Municipality of Maribor

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

Prioritise regenerative resources

Recovering and reusing waste heat, gas, etc. for energy

Recovery and reuse of waste energy

Working together with stakeholders and parties in other unrelated industries to implement circular economy strategies and opportunities

Cross-industry projects, pilots

Circular use of public-owned assets (land, buildings and equipment)

In many industrial processes and in data centres, part of the energy input is lost as residual heat. It is possible to recover the excess heat to be used as a new source of energy. Recovering and utilising residual heat reduces the demand for additional heat generation. In turn, this reduces fuel requirements, and subsequently emissions if fossil fuels are used to generate heat.

Residual heat can be recovered via pipelines and reused again on-site, or transported to another location for another use, such as district heating which heats the homes of residents. In cases where the temperature of the recovered heat is too low, heat pumps can facilitate increasing the temperature to a more suitable temperature. 

Local governments can utilise their wide knowledge and influence to map residual heat flows and heat demand sites to help connect heat supply and demand across stakeholders in the most optimal way. As well as supplying industry with this knowledge, local governments can provide subsidies to industrial sites and data centers to help them to procure the relevant infrastructure and additional technology (e.g. heat pumps). What is more, local governments can commission the development of district heating networks.


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⚡💧  Capture and utilise residual heat

 CE-HEAT project was presented to the representatives of the Wcycle Institute, responsible for catalyzing circular economy in the Municipality of Maribor. The presentation, as part of the framework of European Sustainable Energy Week, took place on March 29, 2018.Utilization of waste heat from the production of electricity in the chain of hydropower plants in Podravje region was discussed.  Dravske elektrarne Maribor (DEM) presented the project of exploitation of this energy. In particular, DEM have highlighted the pilot project of the Fala HPP, where the utilization of waste heat will heat the 100 years old museum part of the power plant.Dr. Boštjan Gregorc presented the preparation of the optimal model of exploitation of waste heat and documentation for the implementation of project and activities in the future, which was created in cooperation with professor Dr. Aleš Hribernik from the Institute for Energy, Process and Environmental Engineering. The colleagues from the Wcycle Institute presented some of their projects and in particular the draft of Transition Strategy on Circular Economy. Several segments of the strategy allude to the possibility of including waste heat as the source in energy supply routes. The strategy was developed as part of the European project GREENCYCLE, the purpose of which is to develop a circular economy system as an integrated approach in support of the implementation of low carbon strategies and additional reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in partner cities of the Alpine region. Furthermore the institute is also in charge of creating a set of tools that will enable the planning, management and monitoring of key processes of the circular economy.As their interest in low carbon energy and circular economy closely align, the partners have agreed to formalize their cross-innovation sessions with regular meetings and future project collaboration.     

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CE HEAT

As part of its efforts to catalyze the circular economy, the Municipality of Maribor, in collaboration with the CE-HEAT consortium has implemented a project for the utilization of waste heat from the production of electricity in the chain of hydropower plants in Podravje region. The utilization of waste heat will heat the 100 years old museum part of the power plant.

Waste heat from hydroelectric power plant in Maribor

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

Engage with the government on circular policies and programmes

Government collaboration

Slovenia

The city of Maribor approved a Circular Economy Strategy in 2018. Maribor’s unique governance model for the local circular transition brings together public companies for waste, utilities and public services, the municipality and the circular innovation agency W-Cycle as steering entities. Circularity is seen as an economic model for the efficient management of resources in Maribor and the city actively engages in international and European networks to learn and exchange further. Maribor’s circular initiatives cover several sectors, including waste management, construction, energy, mobility, water, planning as well as the social economy.