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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 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

Direct and indirect effects that increase revenues or the potential for new revenues, for example from new products, customer segments, partnerships or business models

Revenue Potential

Scalability

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)

Extracting resources and processing them to produce materials for use bysociety

Materials and Fuels

Producing and providing business and consumer goods and services

Goods and Services

Societal Services

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 goods on the Internet, through mail order, or television, or providing goods in stores, including apparel, electronics, furniture, food and drug, etc.

Retail

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

Chemical and Plastic

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

Use waste as a resource

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

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

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within other industries

Valorise waste streams - open loop

Designing to reduce waste during production and use

Design out waste

Engage with the government on circular policies and programmes

Government collaboration

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

Open loop collection

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

Design for minimal waste

Participating in government programmes that support and advance the circular economy

Government programmes

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

Collection of waste arising from commercial and industrial actors

Collect non residential

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

Collect organic

Other

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

Inform

'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

Metrics and indicators to measure progress

Govern the Transition

Institutional design to enable circularity

'Regulate' changes the rules of the systems to achieve compliance through enforcement. 


Regulate

Legislation

Bans

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

Incentivise

Public-private partnerships

 Fiscal Frameworks

Fines

Awareness raising events

Economic Frameworks

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

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Rethink

High-level changes to policy and practice (such as taxation systems, investment and procurement guidelines and criteria) that disincentivize activities that perpetuate linear economic systems, as well as vision-setting (goals, roadmaps) to catalyze
action on circularity across the city

Eliminate linear incentives and set goals and incentives for circularity

Manufactured goods, such as vehicles, textiles, appliances and equipment and their associated production processes are big employers but:
- production processes often rely on fossil fuels and currently drive one-third of the overshoot on the climate change planetary boundary due to its GHG production, 
- material- and energy-intensive industrial activities are linked to deforestation and drive 15% on both the land use and freshwater planetary boundaries, 
- manufacturing goods results in substantial amounts of hazardous industrial waste and leaks chemicals into the environment.

Here, circular solutions must tackle the full value chain, but material demand must also shrink: this will necessitate a societal shift to favouring sufficiency over excess and reducing consumption to sustainable levels. Our four key solutions for manufactured goods are:
- Mainstream industrial symbiosis and efficiency : Achieve process improvements, scrap diversion and reduction in yield losses through greater industrial symbiosis and efficiency. Foster tighter collaboration within and between industries to deliver powerful material and emissions savings.
- Extend the lifetime of machinery, equipment, and goods: Maximise the lifetime of goods that serve our daily needs to bring a number of environmental benefits. 
- Buy what's needed: Reduce the number of purchases of common electronic goods, appliances, and other equipment to sufficiency levels. 
- Eschew fast fashion in favour of sustainable textiles: Drastically reduce new clothing purchases. All used clothing should go on to be repaired, reused or, if needed, recycled appropriately. Prioritise natural and local textile manufacturing, as well as higher-quality and more durable garments. 




👕📱 Consumer Goods

Businesses

Governments

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

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

Urban Opportunities

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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 Circulaire economie is hot! Kocht je vroeger een wasmachine? Nu lease je er één. Werden jeans eerst weggegooid? Nu worden ze verwerkt tot stoere hoodies. Zelfs je gsm kan tegenwoordig modulair opgebouwd worden, waardoor je niet bij elk wissewasje een compleet nieuw toestel hoeft aan te schaffen.
“Ik wil  geen boormachine, maar een gat in de muur” was een ludieke leuze die ik enkele jaren terug tegenkwam op het net. Want laten we wel wezen, we willen graag de lusten, maar alstublieft niet de lasten.
Betalen voor de service, niet het bezit
De startup Gerrard Street speelt slim in op deze behoefte. Zij zijn het eerste bedrijf in Nederland dat een modulaire koptelefoon aanbiedt als dienst. Je kóópt geen koptelefoon, maar je huurt als het ware ‘het geluid’. Voor 7,50 euro per maand heb je een St. Gerrard koptelefoon van goede kwaliteit waar je veel luisterplezier mee hebt. Gaat er een onderdeel stuk? Geen nood. Gerrard Street vervangt het gemakkelijk en kosteloos (inbegrepen bij het abonnement).
Circulair in plaats van lineair
Is het onderdeel niet meer te gebruiken? Dan worden er nieuwe onderdelen van gemaakt. Weggooien of vernietigen is geen optie. Het bedrijf opereert volgens de principes van circulaire economie in plaats van het traditioneel, lineair stelsel waarbij producten op schroothopen belanden met alle milieuvervuilende gevolgen van dien.
Terug naar de modulaire koptelefoon St. Gerrard. Wij mochten deze testen. De bevindingen op een rij.

Eerste indruk
In een platte, kartonnen doos kwam de koptelefoon aan. Voor het eerste gebruik, dient het gemonteerd te worden. Dat gaat vrij simpel. In een soort lego-beeldtaal wordt stap voor stap uitgelegd welk onderdeel waaraan geschroefd moet worden. Dat is binnen enkele minuten gepiept.
Lees tip:  Muziek luisteren als een 'Boss'
De koptelefoon is sober, vrij fors en robuust te noemen. De kabels voelen sterk en degelijk en de kussentjes zijn zacht. Het doet me denken aan een professionele koptelefoon voor in een studio.
Het eerste gebruik
Als alles aan elkaar vastzit, popel ik om het aan te sluiten op mijn gsm. Ik heb zelf geen frequente gebruiker van oordopjes en heb eigenlijk nooit een koptelefoon a la St. Gerrard opgehad. Alles sluit mooi aan en ik moet de koptelefoon wat strakker trekken zodat het goed op de plek blijft zitten. Dit is nog wel een uitdaging. Ik weet niet of ik een gemiddeld hoofd heb, maar het mag iets strakker, zodat je niet het gevoel hebt dat het er bij de minste beweging er af schuift. Via de schroeven aan de zijkant, kun je de koptelefoon naar wens verstellen. Overigens bleef de koptelefoon prima zitten tijdens de test.
Het geluid
St. Gerrard heeft een heel degelijke geluidskwaliteit. Ik heb een gemiddelde volume geprobeerd en dat beviel prima in combinatie met het luisteren naar muziek. Op de afbeelding hieronder nog een kritische tester, mijn dochter van 8. Zoals je ziet; een kind kan de was doen 😉

Gebruikersvriendelijkheid
De koptelefoon is gemakkelijk in elkaar te zetten, goed te verstellen en snel aan te sluiten. Het grootste gemis voor mij was een hoesje waar St. Gerrard in kan. Als je iemand bent die altijd een koptelefoon mee hebt in je tas, is het fijn om het te beschermen tegen vuil en stoten.
Voor een basic, no-nonsense koptelefoon is de St. Gerrard prima. Maar als ik een fervente gebruiker was, zou ik inderdaad meer voelen voor een draadloze variant. Daar is het bedrijf momenteel druk mee bezig.
Lees tip:  Muziek luisteren als een 'Boss'Als ik St. Gerrard vergelijk met oordopjes is het sowieso een hele verademing. Ik heb namelijk altijd last van oorpijn als ik oordopjes in heb. Negen van de tien keer gaan die dingen ook snel stuk. En nog maar te zwijgen van smerige oorsmeer (tja, je bent maar mens) die meekomt :-/
Kosten huren koptelefoon
Een professionele koptelefoon kopen, kost je al gauw een paar honderd euro. Een beetje koptelefoon begint namelijk vanaf een paar tientjes. Het grootste nadeel is dat koptelefoons bij intensief gebruik snel slijten of dat ze überhaupt een korte levensduur hebben. Vaak zit er niets anders op dan een nieuwe te kopen. Dan merk je dat je eigenlijk relatief gezien niet erg duur uit bent met een modulaire St. Gerrard. Voor een jaar ben je 12 x 7,50 euro = 90 euro kwijt. Voor 90 euro ben je verzekerd van een degelijke, duurzame koptelefoon met goed geluid, vervangende onderdelen indien nodig en een jong bedrijf dat zich blijft ontwikkelen in service en aanbod.
Check voor meer info de website van St. Gerrard.

Over Gerrard Street
Gerrard Street is opgericht door Tom Leenders, Dorus Galama en Yvette Koppert. Tom en Dorus zijn beiden afgestudeerd als industrieel ontwerpers aan de TU Delft. Yvette is afgestudeerd in Finance & Investments aan de Erasmus Universiteit. De startup wordt ondersteund vanuit het Europese stimuleringsfonds Climate-KIC en is opgenomen bij de incubators YES!Delft en Open-House.
Het bedrijf wil op termijn ook andere modulaire producten opnemen in het assortiment. Daarbij valt naast modulaire koptelefoons te denken aan modulaire telefoons en laptops.
Lees tip:  Muziek luisteren als een 'Boss'-Deze review is mogelijk gemaakt door Gerrard Street-
Wat vind je van het idee om te betalen voor service in plaats van bezit? Deel je mening hieronder! 


 Single-use plastic is one of the key sources that accelerate the rapid degradation of the environment. With practically no recyclable purposes, it has been disposed of indiscriminately in environmentally sensitive locations such as waterways and landfills among others. In Quezon City, the primary challenge faced was that plastic bags were improperly discarded. While representing a missed opportunity to recover, reuse and recycle plastic, they also negatively impacted the city’s waste stream, contributing to various nuisances to the environment. In a study conducted by the Environmental Protection and Waste Management Department, plastic bags have been found to amount to 12% of the total waste composition of the city. This finding motivated implementation of an effective system of plastic bag recovery which sought the participation and commitment of the business sector and the citizens to protect the living environment. In 2012, the City Government enacted the Quezon City Ordinance SP-2140 series of 2012, entitled “An Ordinance Regulating the Use of Plastic Bags and Establishing an Environmental Fee for its Use, Providing Mechanism for Its Recovery and Recycling and Providing Penalties for Violation Thereof” otherwise known as the Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance. The Quezon City Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance has been then integrated into the harmonization of the city’s local environmental ordinances in 2014, leading to the creation of the Ordinance No. SP-2350, S-2014 or An Ordinance Providing for the Environmental Protection and Waste Management Code of Quezon City, also known as the “QC Environment Code”. What's innovative? How does it work? Type 1 retailers (Shopping Malls, Supermarkets, Department Stores, Grocery Stores, Fast Food Chains, Drug Stores, Pharmacy) shall impose a Plastic Recovery System Fee (PRSF) of two pesos (P2.00) for plastic bags having a thickness not lower than 15 microns. The establishment of a plastic recovery system fee was designed to primarily change consumer behavior rather than to generate funds. Such fees are put in place to change consumer habits and awareness, encouraging the use of reusable bags. This measure seeks to curb the amount of plastic bags in the waste stream, institutionalizing a more efficient and convenient recovery system for plastic bags in line with the 3Rs principle. A comprehensive, in-depth consultation with the business sector was undertaken to create the plastic bag recovery system and the plastic bag recovery fee. Since this wasn’t primarily a revenue generation scheme, the plastic recovery fee was not remitted to city’s funds. Instead, it remains with the retail stores and then utilized to fund various environmental initiatives, subject to prior approval of the city government. To monitor progresses, each retail business has to submit quarterly to the City Government a self-monitoring report detailing the quantity of recovered plastic bags and the amount of collected plastic recovery fee. As of the end of 2017, a total number of 6,269,278 pieces of plastic bags were recovered. A number of establishments have already implemented their “green fund” projects. For instance, one establishment utilized these revenues to donate 11,000 chairs made from converted soft plastic to various schools across the city. Another example is the donation of several eco-bicycles to the city’s police force. The compliance of the business establishments with the scheme and their initiative to develop and implement “green fund” projects added to the credibility and success of the city’s Plastic Recovery Fee System. In addition, this policy intervention addressed multiple concerns (e.g. the regulation of plastic bags), and is now contributing to shift consumers behaviour towards a more reuse-oriented attitude, as well as institutionalizing a revenue generating system that directly benefits the local communities and contributes to the city’s objective of becoming a low carbon and sustainable city. Links to further information: The QC Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance http://quezoncity.gov.ph/index.php/featured-articles/875-qc-plastic-bag-reduction Contact Details: Ms. Frederika Rentoy Head Environmental Protection and Waste Management Department Quezon City Government Tel. (632) 988-4242 

Quezon City

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The Quezon City Plastic Bag Reduction Task Force was
established to ensure the successful implementation
of an Ordinance and oversee the implementation of
the rules and regulations. 

The Task Force consists of
the Environmental Protection and Waste Management
Department (EPWMD) Members:
• League of Barangays in the Philippines (association of Philippine local government units)
• Market Development and Administration Department (MDAD)
• Business Permits and Licencing Office (BPLO)
• Barangay Operation Centre (BOC)

The Task Force is responsible to keep track records, report on compliance and encourage awareness through
large-scale information, education and communication
campaigns

Quezon City Plastic Bag Reduction Task Force

 Municipality of Quezon

<p>Single-use plastic is one of the key sources that accelerate the rapid degradation of the environment. In Quezon City, improper disposal of plastic bags has negatively impacted the city’s waste stream, contributing to various nuisances to the environment.</p><p>To address the issue, the city government enacted the "QC Environment Code" in 2014. The policy intervention promotes the reduction of the use of plastic bags by imposing environmental fees for each plastic bag used within the city, and institutionalise a more efficient and convenient recovery system for plastic bags in line with the 3Rs principle (reduce, reuse, recycle).</p>