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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 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

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

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

Biodiversity

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

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

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

Replace energy sources with less impactful alternatives and enact energy efficiency measures

Regenerative energy

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

Generating energy from waste

'Manage' influences the use and function of physical and material elements within the urban environment. 

Manage

Develop infrastructure to support resource cycling

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

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Rethink

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

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

Support closed-loop systems and cross-sectoral synergies

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

Residual organic and food wastes can offer a quasi-renewable and low-carbon source of energy. By processing organic wastes, often under high temperatures, pressures and in the absence of oxygen, organic wastes can be transformed into fuels, which can be used for heating, electricity generation, as well as transportation. A variety of technologies have been developed to generate biogas from organic materials, for example, anaerobic digestion. Such facilities can vary in scale from single units that can process the waste of a single building or neighbourhood, to large-scale facilities that can process the majority of the organic wastes generated from the entire city. 

Cities have a key role to support the utilisation of organic materials as biofuels due to their close oversight and influence on the urban waste management system. In particular, cities can support the financing of large-scale facilities to help to overcome the investment costs, as well as develop relationships with businesses to operate such facilities. 


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🍏  💧  Biogas from organic materials

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

Governments

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

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

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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Turku

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City of Turku

Kakolanmäki wastewater treatment plant

Topinoja waste treatment center

<p>The Kakolanmäki wastewater treatment plant in Turku features a heat pumping station. Turku Energy Ltd. uses the station to extract some of the thermal energy from the wastewater to produce heat for district heating purposes (160 GWh / year) of 15.000 households. The water that is cooled down by the pumping station is also used for district cooling (30 GWh / year, or almost all of the need in Turku city). The heat recovery system has been made particularly efficient by several investements in research and development: one unit of electrical energy used at the station produces three units of district heating and two units of district cooling. It is estimated that carbon emissions in the Turku region are 80.000 tons lower per year because of the use of the heat pump station. Moreover, the Kakolanmäki wastewater treatment plant transport sludge to the Topinoja waste treatment center in Turku where the sludge is processed using anaerobic digestion. The plant processes 50.000 tons of sludge from Kakolanmäki per year, producing 30 GWh / year used in various regional transport needs. One third of the nutrients from the digestate are used as fertilizers in agriculture and two thirds in landscaping. Nitrogen products produced from the sludge and sold to chemical industries. The sludge treatment process, it is considered CO2 negative and energy positive.</p>