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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

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

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

Increase Awareness

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

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

Reduce Energy Consumption

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

Transportation and Logistics

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

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

Engage internally to guide employees and facilitate greater knowledge sharing between internal divisions

Internal collaboration

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

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

Mobilise

Govern the Transition

Raise awareness and run information campaigns about  strategies for and impacts of the circular economy in different contexts.

Communication and awareness

Redesign systems to lay the foundation for circular activities and enable the transition to a circular economy 

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Rethink

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

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

Ensure that infrastructure and built assets in the city are designed and upgraded to be as resource-efficient as possible.

Design infrastructure and the built environment for resource efficiency

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

Communities

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

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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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 Reading Time:  5 minutesColombian capital Bogotá this month announced a target to improve air quality by 10 per cent on average in the next four years as part of broader development plans that feature sustainability as “the main axis”.
Bogotá’s District Development Plan 2020-2024: a new social and environmental contract for the 21st century, dubbed #ElPlanQueNosReactiva (“The Plan That Reactivates Us”), allocates the equivalent of billions of US dollars towards a green recovery from COVID-19.
“We have decided not to lose this cleaner air that we have had during the pandemic,” said Mayor of Bogotá Claudia López Hernández last week in webinar, Clear Skies to Clean Air, organized by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Wildlife Fund and Environmental Defense Fund, in collaboration with the World Bank.
The city recorded an 80 per cent drop in concentrations of particulate pollution in early April, though it saw air pollution spikes from forest fires in the Orinoquía and Venezuela that also wafted into other Colombian cities, including Medellín.
The plan is the City’s main salvo against air pollution since the new mayor took office earlier this year, and focuses heavily on sustainable, multimodal mobility, which commands the biggest share of planned funding at 36,919,236 million Colombian pesos (about US$9.8 billion), followed by education and health.
“It means continuing to electrify our mass transport system, which is based on buses, and going ahead and advancing with a metro system that is fully electric,” said Mayor López.
“We now have more than 1 million trips on a daily basis by bike. We already have 560 kilometres of cycleways, which is, I think, the greatest bike network among developing cities. And we have a plan, a goal to increase that by 50 per cent, to 60 kilometres more bike lanes around the city,” she continued.
Since March, when the pandemic started, Bogotá temporarily added 80 kilometres of bike lanes to its existing network, joining many major cities around the world including New York, Milan, Barcelona, London and Paris, which sought to help citizens with safe physical distancing as they took to their bicycles to avoid crowds on public transport.
“There are more people walking, so we need to improve the network for pedestrians, too,” Mayor Lopéz said.
“I think this is going to be the most important thing, because, of course, if people are walking or bike riding, they have a lower risk of being infected by coronavirus in the short term, but, also, in the long term, it has a very good impact on improving air pollution and also, reducing congestion in the city. So this is not going to be temporary,” she said.
Bogotá’s 8 million residents are joined each day by about 2 million commuters, who shuttle in and out from the surrounding municipalities for work and education, leading the city government to initiate a regional approach to air quality improvement.
“We need to offer a clean option of metro regional transportation for those 2 million people,” said Mayor Lopéz.
“We just approved a constitutional reform that allows us to build an institution for the metropolitan area, between Bogotá and Cundinamarca, the province surrounding us that has 46 municipalities,” said Mayor Lopéz.
“That was a sort of miracle in the middle of a pandemic,” she added.
Bogotá is cradled high in the middle of three mountain systems, among which is nestled a world-famous moor system that feeds freshwater to the city and its surrounding provinces, adding impetus to the creation of a formal regional institution.
“Creating this institution is very important, firstly, for general environmental protection, but secondly, because we will not be able to achieve our goals if our surrounding municipalities don’t share the vision and the goals, because air doesn’t know our administrative and political boundaries.
“Because of that, we also need to build this clean mass transit system at the regional level, because otherwise we can have, within the city, this metro system, this bike system, this pedestrian system, but if people come into the city every day with diesel, fuel based cars… we’re not going to be able to achieve our own measures,” said Mayor Lopéz.
Her administration expects that these measures, combined, to make “the most important contribution in the long term” to air quality improvement, in a city where transportation contributes over 70 per cent of air pollution.
Bogotá will also impose restrictions on trucks, which will have to comply with standards if they wish to enter the city, and is considering offering incentives for switches to cleaner technology.
“Because, otherwise, we’re not going to be able to achieve our goal of 10 per cent air pollution reduction,” explained the mayor.
The proposed budget includes an investment of close to 30,000 million Colombian pesos (about US$8 million) specifically towards the goal of reducing concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) by 10 per cent through the implementation of the city’s 2030 Comprehensive Air Quality Management Plan.
Under the 2030 plan, the Ministry of Environment intends to strengthen and expand the city’s coverage of air quality monitoring, focusing on its southwestern areas, where air pollution concentrations are highest, and where the administration has now announced it will to work with all relevant actors to achieve a deeper reduction of 18 per cent.
The Council approved Bogotá’s development plan after extensive debate in which lobbyists and citizens participated.
“We qualify our air quality goal to integrate one of our major concerns: that there is air governance. We will seek the participation of civil society and academia that allows us to move forward to meet our air quality goals,” said Bogotá’s Secretary of the Environment, Carolina Urrutia.
The new development plan is closely aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, with 67 per cent of its goals directly related to CONPES 3918, Colombia’s strategy to implement the SDGs in the country, and 90 per cent of its budget related to SDG targets, including those related to air quality and climate change.
“We managed to expand our action plan to commit the District to reducing at least 15 per cent of its greenhouse gases during this Government. We are all going to have to contribute to reduce those gases that are causing climate change,” Urrutia said.
The city’s administration sees the environment as “an ally for the economic reactivation of the city”.
“It is an opportunity to create green jobs and businesses, to encourage the transition from grey to green economies, to promote energy transitions, and we will do so,” it stated in a media release.
Emphasizing its focus on sustainability and air quality, Bogotá’s district administration has taken on the slogan #UnidosPorUnNuevoAire, or United for A New Air, promising to work to protect the health of those most vulnerable to pollution: children and the elderly.
“It is the first time that as a local government Bogota set specific goals and committed itself to specific goals to clean air pollution. It seems modest, but… because air pollution has increased systematically, and we committed to decrease it by 10 per cent on average in the next four years, it is quite ambitious, as the experts on this topic know. It’s such a hard job to get done,” said Mayor Lopéz.
Bogotá economy has been badly hit by measures to halt the spread of COVID-19 since it went into lockdown in mid-March, the earliest of all Colombian cities.
But, as it emerges from pandemic restrictions, the mayor sees opportunities to invest in a sustainable recovery, emphasizing, among other things, inclusive education and attracting green and tech jobs that allow for flexible movement.
“We’re going to take the advantage that the pandemic allows us to speed up this agenda for clean air and for different modes of clean and green transportation, and we’re going to take that opportunity forward,” Mayor Lopéz said.
Source: Secretaría Distrital de Ambiente, Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá D.C.
Read the media release from the Ministry of Environment here: Plan de Desarrollo: Mejorar la calidad del aire 10 %, prioridad para esta Administración
See the Mayor’s presentation of the plan here: Plan de Desarrollo 2020-2024: un nuevo contrato social y ambiental para el siglo XXI
Watch the WWF webinar here (when available) here (scroll to “Clear Skies to Clean Air”)
Banner photo by Carlos Felipe Pardo/CC BY 2.0 

 A contract for 1,002 pure electric buses in Bogota (Colombia) has been awarded to BYD, making 1,472 the number of e-buses from the Chinese manufacturer headed to the capital city. The Chinese manufacturer announced a few days ago the major contract. The tender was open to all bus technologies. This is the largest order for pure-electric buses outside of China to date: Yutong has been commissioned in November 2020 the same number of vehicles in Qatar, but the figure includes also traditional drive buses, with 741 being battery-electric.
A previous supply for 470 e-buses was inaugurated in mid-December 2020 with the delivery of the first 120 vehicles. So far, the, BYD has won 1,472 orders for pure electric buses in the Colombian capital. At present, the producer has accumulated 1,550 orders for pure electric buses in Colombia.

Local partners in Colombia for BYD e-buses
BYD points out in a press release that «Bogotá City Public Transport Authority (TRANSMILENIO S.A.) launched a public commercial tender covering diesel, CNG and electric technologies for 1,295 buses in August. Three of BYD’s global strategic partners finally adopted BYD’s integrated electric bus solutions for their bids and successfully won the tender, totally 1,002 pure electric buses. BYD will partner with local bus manufacturers Superpolo and BUSSCAR respectively on the bus body parts.This batch of buses is scheduled to be delivered during 2021 and into the first half of 2022, and will be put into operation on 34 bus routes across five regions of the capital, providing residents along the routes with quiet, safe and emissions-free travel services».
According to TRANSMILENIO S.A., these buses will reduce 83,433 tons of carbon dioxide and 9.63 tons of particle emissions per year compared to diesel buses meeting fifth-generation European emission standards over the 15-year concession period.
The development of electric transport in Latin America
“This more than 1,000 buses order marks a fresh start, which will effectively promote the rapid development of green transportation in Latin America and the coming era of global bus electrification,” said Stella Li, President BYD Motors. “In the move towards electrification globally, BYD will continue to make great contributions moving forward.”
“Assembling the bus body parts in Colombia will not only help boost the national economy by creating skilled jobs for the local community, but also improve the quality of transportation services, cut carbon emissions, and improve the environment,” said Maria Fernanda Ortiz, head of the TRANSMILENIO S.A.
“As the world’s leading new energy vehicle manufacturer, BYD has overcome many difficulties resulting from the pandemic, exclusively winning this tender because of our all-round capability”, said Lara Zhang, the Regional Director of BYD Latin America. “We are extremely grateful for the trust and recognition of all our strategic clients, and we are also looking forward to working with Superpolo and BUSSCAR on this exciting project.” 

South America

Colombia

Bogotá

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Muncipality of Bogotá

<p>In a packed city of 8 million residents, the municipality of Bogotá noticed how drastically reduced their transportation pollution levels were during early COVID-19 regulations. Instead of allowing a return back to high levels like were seen pre-pandemic, Bogotá strove to keep their air pollution low while still recouping their economic and transport systems with a series of development and transport system interventions.</p>

Bogotá governs the transition towards a more sustainable transportation and circular system for cleaner air

Article / Report

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

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

Energy Utilities and Independent Power Producers

Generating energy from waste through processes such as anaerobic digestion, gasification, incineration, etc.

Generating energy from waste

Innovation-oriented public procurement

Bogotá will become the first city in Colombia and the second in Latin America with a Waste-to-Energy Plant —a model that is also being implemented in parallel in Mexico City— in which inorganic waste is decomposed through heat. This process is beneficial for the environment, since it generates low CO2 emissions and makes waste management efficient by converting waste into energy. “For those who believed that our Climate Action Plan and the POT were just regulations, today we show you another result. We are on the Doña Juana public where we now have two technologies at work; the first is the Biogas plant, the second is the burying of garbage. The latter is harmful as it produces leachates, methane, and greenhouse gases,” said the Mayor, Claudia López.Bogotá’s representative added: “Today we are announcing to the city that we will now have a third technology to treat waste that will reduce the environmental impact and generate energy for the city. With this new plant we are fulfilling our promise to residents of Ciudad Bolívar, Usme, and Tunjuelito, who asked us to stop taking waste to their boroughs to bury it there. We are not going to continue to expand Doña Juana.”Here, a tweet in which Mayor López, recalls that with this Waste-to-Energy Plant she fulfills a promise she made to Bogotá:Transformar Doña Juana en un parque de innovación tecnológica con energías limpias, que brinde beneficios para la comunidad del sur de la ciudad, fue mi compromiso como candidata, hoy es mi promesa cumplida como Alcaldesa y parte de #LaBogotáQueEstamosConstruyendo! pic.twitter.com/CQ5iR22WvW
— Claudia López Hernández (@ClaudiaLopez) May 11, 2022The process begins today with the publication of the contract pre-specifications, which will be available on the SECOP II public procurement platform for 20 business days. Subsequently, the final bid specifications will be published and the public tender will be held, to be awarded in September of this year.“This is an achievement that passed through the government program, through the Development Plan, and through the POT. Now, it is a reality. This model has already been implemented in other parts of the world and now we’re doing it here, in Bogotá. Now we can proudly tell our people that we are treating waste differently,” said Luz Amanda Camacho, director of the Special Administrative Unit of Public Services (UAESP, as the acronym in Spanish).In this tweet, Mayor Claudia López, shares that as of May 11, the tender to build this technological innovation park will open:Bienvenidos a otra meta cumplida del POT y del Plan de Acción Climática de Bogotá! Hoy abrimos licitación internacional para tener una nueva tecnología de procesamiento de residuos en Doña Juana: la termovalorización, que transforma residuos en energía limpia. pic.twitter.com/WEl1stlRc3
— Claudia López Hernández (@ClaudiaLopez) May 11, 2022The plant, which will be built in the Doña Juana Innovation Park, will be implemented in modules. The first module will come into operation in December of next year, and by 2027, it will transform between 2400 and 3000 tons of waste every day, generating more than 128 megawatts of energy, enough to power all public lighting in Bogotá or more than 40,000 homes in the city.Additionally, the ashes resulting from the combustion of waste will be sold as construction materials. In this way, the use of one hundred percent of the treated material is guaranteed, as is the reduction of the generation of leachates that affect the subsoil and the Tunjuelito River. In addition, thanks to the emissions cleaning system, the Waste-to-Energy Plant together with Biogas Colombia will reduce the emissions of polluting gases to the ozone layer by 66 percent, compared to what is produced today with the burying of waste.This plant will become a benchmark for other cities in Colombia and the region, by contributing to changing the current model of waste treatment and promoting the circular economy in Bogotá, contributing to the fight against climate change.“The management of public waste with this plant will reduce the production of methane and greenhouse gases, in addition to lowering emissions and their impact. The leachates that contaminate the Tunjuelo river basin will also be reduced,” confirmed the Secretary of Environment, Carolina Urrutia.The financial model proposed by the UAESP for this process includes the sale of both the energy generated and the ashes resulting from the plant’s operations, with the aim of obtaining the necessary income for its continued correct functioning, avoiding an increase in cleaning fees paid by citizens.“Today we buried 6200 tons of waste in Bogotá, now with the Biogas plant and the Waste-to-Energy plant, this waste will be transformed into energy. This model will contribute to the circular economy and will not affect the rate that we currently pay for cleaning,” added the director of the UAESP. This important project is added to the portfolio of waste management initiatives carried out by Bogotá’s Recycling Organizations, as well as the organic waste treatment pilot projects, and of special note, the reduction of 7000 tons per month of demolition and construction waste, the result of illegal dumping at so-called critical points.District receives resources for Gas generated in Doña JuanaDuring the event, the Mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, and the director of the UAESP, Luz Amanda Camacho, toured the Biogás Colombia plant and verified the process that is carried out to convert the gases generated by buried waste into electrical energy.At the end of the tour, the manager of Biogás Colombia, Helmuth Gallego, presented the Mayor with a check for 2.475 billion pesos, product of the profits generated from the sale of energy during the first half of 2021. This money will be invested entirely in actions to improve the quality of life of the inhabitants in Doña Juana’s area of influence. 

City government of Bogota

<p>After years of managing waste problems, the municipality of Bogotá approved the implementation of an innovation park that will include a waste-to-energy plant. Being the first of its class in the country, it is expected to reduce the amount of waste that will be disposed of in the landfill “Doña Juana”.</p>