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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

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

Use waste as a resource

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

Public-private partnerships

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

An estimated 80% of wastewater is discharged into the environment without treatment (UN), threatening aquatic wildlife, quality of groundwater and surface water resources, and human health. To avoid these negative effects, it is important to improve wastewater collection and treatment from both households and industries. 

Cities can help achieve this goal by improving wastewater transport and treatment infrastructure, adopting laws and regulations for wastewater treatment discharge, and offer financial incentives for businesses and industries to improve pollution controls over their effluents and advance treatment technologies. 

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💧 Improving wastewater treatment infrastructure

Water system refers to the water supply network for storing and supplying water for use by the community.

One of the greatest challenges of a city is to provide its inhabitants with safe, clean water from a limited fresh water supply. Improving the city’s water infrastructure efficiency, such as minimising leakages, reduces the strain put on the limited supply, which in turn, helps to ensure inhabitants gain access to clean and affordable water.

The water infrastructure of a city typically consists of components such as surface water diversions, wells, pumps, transmission pipes and canals, treatment and storage facilities, and distribution network elements (Burian et al.). Options for improving the efficiency of the system include investing in water loss reduction systems, creating and following a regular maintenance program, and better matching water supply and demand (Global Water Partnership).

Cities can improve the efficiency of their water system infrastructure by conducting a water audit, in which all water flows are traced and losses in the system are identified to map where the most efficiency improvements can be gained. Alongside this, asset management can be used to create a short-term and long-term strategy of investing in new equipment, refurbishing existing equipment and developing maintenance programmes to ensure infrastructure is as efficient as possible, and leaks are minimised. Such management programmes create financial transparency amongst all stakeholders and provide useful long-term planning for larger infrastructure changes (US EPA)

💧 Water Systems

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

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

Ecological Impact

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

Water and Sewage

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

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

Producing and gathering crop and animal products from land and water through farming, hunting, and fishing

Agriculture

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

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

Save Water (SDG6)

Much of the wastewater generated by homes, industries, and businesses must be treated before it is released back into the environment. This is because it contains nutrients and other substances that can be harmful to the environment and human health, as well as to aquatic fauna and flora. These nutrients can cause oxygen depletion in water bodies, beach closures and contamination of drinking water. However, if the nutrients are recovered, they can often be put to beneficial use. 

For instance, biorefineries use wastewater as a source of raw materials, generating products of value from waste nutrients and simultaneously producing clean water for reuse or discharge. Nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus can be converted into environmentally friendly fertilisers, and used for ecological restoration and agricultural purposes. Biosolids from wastewater can be used as fuel for heating, replacing fossil fuels and reducing the amount of biosolids sent to landfill. 

Local governments have an important role to play in providing pipes, water management and treatment infrastructure to ensure that water is safely handled. They can also play a role in monitoring privately run facilities to ensure compliance with environmental performance standards. Finally, cities can connect stakeholders to match supply and demand for non-potable water, energy and nutrients recovered from wastewater.


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💧  Recovery of nutrients and chemicals from wastewater and sludge

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

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

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


Construction and Infrastructure

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

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

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

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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  Circular Economy: Tapping the Power of Wastewa...  Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) consume large amounts of energy, estimated at between 1% and 3% of global energy output. State-of-the-art facilities consume ...  

Dakar

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Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

ONAS

<p>The Janicki Omniprocessor pilot project in Dakar, Senegal, successfully built a public-private partnership among the national sewage company and local businesses to establish a privately owned truck fleet to collect fecal sludge for processing in the Janicki Omniprocessor. The Omniprocessor reprocesses the sludge into inputs for agriculture and construction while also yielding energy and clean water.</p>

A public-private partnership comes together to valorize sludge in Dakar

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This collection features a selection of inspiring examples of the circular economy in the water sector, compiled in the context of the World Bank's Water in Circular Economy and Resilience (WICER) Initiative, presenting the WICER framework together with global case studies that show the benefits of becoming circular and resilient.

WICER is an initiative by the World Bank's [Water Global Practice](https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/water) to establish a common understanding of the definitions and applications of circular economy and resilience principles in the urban water sector, and to promote the implementation of those principles in our projects and when working with governments and partners around the world

As part of the initiative, the Water in Circular Economy and Resilience (WICER) Framework has been developed which describes the key actions needed to achieve three main outcomes: 1) deliver resilient and inclusive services, 2) design out waste and pollution, and 3) preserve and regenerate natural systems. As part of the initiative, case studies have also been developed, showcasing best practices around the world, and guidelines and other relevant material have been compiled to help cities accelerate the transition to a circular economy. 

The initiative sets out to demystify the circular economy in water by showing that both high-income and low-income countries can benefit from it. Circular and resilient cities are crucial to achieve the SDGs.

 This initiative is supported by the [Global Water Security & Sanitation Partnership (GWSP)](https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/global-water-security-sanitation-partnership).

To learn more about Water in Circular Economy and Resilience (WICER) Initiative visit [https://www.worldbank.org/wicer ](https://www.worldbank.org/wicer)

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Water in Circular Economy and Resilience

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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

Water is not only at the core of different public services cities provide, including application and sanitation, water also acts as a carrier of nutrients and energy which can benefit other urban systems. However, Global demand for freshwater will exceed viable resources by 40% by 2030, if we continue with business as usual ([ARUP](https://www.arup.com/-/media/arup/files/publications/w/water_and_circular_economy_whitepaper.pdf)). Exploring the synergistic link between water, food and energy in urban systems becomes central to sustainable development and the sustainable management of water. Urban changemakers in all three areas should start taking a more holistic approach to water management—from water resource management, to ecosystem protection and water supply and sanitation ([UN Water](https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/water-food-and-energy/)).

Bringing circularity within the food-water-energy nexus means recognising all urban water flows—drinking water, stormwater, wastewater and source water—as potential resources for use across these three sectors. Circular water systems can maximise synergies between food water and energy systems by protecting water availability to maintain agricultural production in water scarce regions, or by recovering energy from wastewater treatment, replacing fossil fuels used for cooking or heating. Solid organic matter, or biosolids, recovered from a sewage treatment can also be used as a fertiliser, preventing harmful chemicals from polluting water streams so that water sources are clean and safe to drink.

Local governments can govern the food-water-energy nexus by looking holistically at the city’s infrastructure. They can update city plans to integrate Green Blue Infrastructure (GBI) which can provide tangible benefits to each dimension of the food-water-energy nexus. Parks, green walls, waterways and greenways can, for example, provide food, water, fibre and fuel to support the urban ecosystem. Moreover, bringing different actors together, from the department of water resources, food safety, as well as energy and planning, is at the heart of any form of integrated planning. To spur cross-sectoral collaboration, for instance, cities can convene different actors on dedicated platforms and facilitate effective communication between different city departments and public organisations. Embedding a nexus strategy in municipal policy may lay a foundation for cross departmental budgeting and program implementation.


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💧 🍏 ⚡  Supporting solutions that maximise synergies between food water and energy systems

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

Ensure that biological products are properly managed and preserved

Maximise lifetime of biological products

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

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

Replace freshwater with less impactful alternatives and enact water efficiency measures

Regenerative water

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)

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

Regenerate

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

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Rethink

Facilitate cross-collaboration by engaging city departments, industries and businesses on ambitious, closed-loop circular projects.

Support closed-loop systems and cross-sectoral synergies

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within other industries

Valorise waste streams - open loop

Develop infrastructure to support resource cycling

          Have you ever thought of how significant your urine can be? Loads! Amsterdam water authorities have reportedly planned to collect urine and utilizing it for phosphate fertilizer. An age-old tradition! The campaign has been called 'Green Urine Campaign'. The campaign also aims to raise awareness of the benefits of recycling urine i.e., Peecycling.
Here is all you should know about the Green Urine campaign and peecycling:As collection site, the campaign uses outdoor urinals in Amsterdam's La Place de la BourseThe tagline on the outdoor urinals reads: "Is our wastewater actually a goldmine?"Urine is being collected by the city's water company, WaternetThe campaign aims to raise awareness about water issues and explore solutions, such as industrial and municipal water reuse. Also, the technology for optimizing the water cycleThe campaign also aims at raising awareness about waste reduction and the prospect of using urine for agricultural use since it contains mineral phosphorusFarmers generally use mined phosphate to fertilize crops and to provide this vital nutrientSince scientists believe that phosphate resources will run out in 50-100 years, converting urine into fertilizer rich in phosphate might produce a new revenue stream for Amsterdam and beyondUrine can be used directly on plants when diluted with water, providing nitrogen, phosphorus and potassiumHowever, using human waste as fertilizer is considered a taboo in many parts of the world.Interested in General Knowledge and Current Affairs? Click here to stay informed and know what is happening around the world with our G.K. and Current Affairs section.To get more updates on Current Affairs, send in your query by mail to education.intoday@gmail.com Click here for IndiaToday.in’s complete coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.         

<p>Cambérène, the largest sanitation system in the Greater Dakar area, has focused on three areas through the Cambérène, WWTP: (1) the reuse of wastewater by market gardeners (horticulturalists) around Dakar; (2)&nbsp;energy production from methane gas produced during wastewater treatment; and (3) recovery and sale of treated fecal sludge. This brought economic benefits for ONAS such as additional revenue and for local farmers such as cost savings, as well as environmental and social benefits such as less polution of aquifers.</p>