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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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Business case

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)

Producing electrical equipment and machinery for industrial use

Capital Equipment

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


Construction and Infrastructure

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

Energy Utilities and Independent Power Producers

Producing electric cables and wires, power-generating equipment, including solar modules, motors, power turbines, as well as electronic equipment and instruments, including computer chips, communication equipment, analytical instruments, lasers, display screens, point-of-sales machines, security system equipment, and healthcare equipment

Electrical and Electronic Equipment

While resources are in-use, maintain, repair and upgrade them to maximise their lifetime and give them a second life through take back strategies when applicable

Stretch the lifetime

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

Develop infrastructure to support resource cycling

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

Incorporate extended use in project planning phases; create or update city policies to allow for extended use.


Design and regulate for separation and recovery

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

Businesses

Governments

Renewable energy already accounts for over 50% of the newly installed power generation capacity ([IRENA](https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/Apr/Global-energy-transformation-A-roadmap-to-2050-2019Edition)). As the power generation shifts towards renewables, oil and gas assets will need decommissioning and demand for materials will increase to meet the need for new energy infrastructure. However, secondary materials are rarely available. The majority of materials and equipment from old energy infrastructure is downcycled rather than reused or repurposed. Whereas recycling processes for renewable energy equipment are not widespread yet, mainly because until now, the issue of their disposal and recycling has not existed on a large scale. 

The circular economy could reduce virgin material extraction and offer high-value alternatives through recycling and decommissioning old energy infrastructure—from recycling glass in solar panels to repurposing wind turbines into bikeshed and bridges. The global market for disposal and recycling of solar and wind equipment could be worth upwards of $360 million by 2024, meaning great opportunities for green job and workforce development ([Better Energy](https://www.betterenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Waste-and-Recycling-Fact-Sheet.pdf)). Repurposing and recycling these assets can also reduce emissions associated with the disposal of their components and create revenue to finance decommissioning through the reselling of components at end-of-life.

Local governments can facilitate this transition by setting the right regulations that enable repurposing and recycling of these assets, offer upskilling and reskilling opportunities for workers that could focus on decommissioning and recycling assets as we move away from building new facilities, and require approved end-of-life management plans to be included in tenders for energy projects managed by the city. Governments can also support research on recycling technologies and ensure that financial resources are available for end of life handling of the equipment even if the original parties are unable to perform it (e.g. if they have gone out of business)—via a performance bond or other surety.


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⚡  Recycling and repurposing energy equipment

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

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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  Wind turbines have a service life of around 20 years. 85% of them can be recycled. But the plastic polymer blades pose a special challenge. 100% recyclable blades are just around the corner. In the meantime, people have come up with some innovative ways to reuse them. 

 Like many good things in life, wind turbines don’t last forever. But disposing of retired turbine blades has become a headache for the renewable energy industry. They’re made of materials that can’t easily be recycled.

 But from cycle shelters to bridges, life-expired blades are finding innovative new uses around the world. And the first 100% recyclable turbine blades have just been produced in Denmark.
  Up to 85% of an existing wind turbine, including the steel mast and electrical components made of metals like copper, can be recycled, but not the turbine blades, which already account for 10% of Europe's fibre-reinforced composite material waste. 
      Image shows a large wind turbine, of which must be replaced after 20 years of service.   Image: Pixabay/Steppinstars      The University of Strathclyde estimates that by 2050 there will be 2 million tonnes of wind turbine waste needing safe disposal globally by 2050. 
    Plastic  What is the World Economic Forum doing about plastic pollution?   More than 90% of plastic is never recycled, and a whopping 8 million metric tons of plastic waste are dumped into the oceans annually. At this rate, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans by 2050. 

 The Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) is a collaboration between businesses, international donors, national and local governments, community groups and world-class experts seeking meaningful actions to beat plastic pollution. 
  In Ghana, for example, GPAP is working with technology giant SAP to create a group of more than 2,000 waste pickers and measuring the quantities and types of plastic that they collect. This data is then analysed alongside the prices that are paid throughout the value chain by buyers in Ghana and internationally.

 It aims to show how businesses, communities and governments can redesign the global “take-make-dispose” economy as a circular one in which products and materials are redesigned, recovered and reused to reduce environmental impacts.

 Read more in our impact story.
   
 In the past, blades which include fibreglass or glass reinforced polymers (GRP), have been dumped in landfills or incinerated. Germany has already banned composite materials from landfills and other nations are also imposing full or partial bans.
  The Danish port city of Aalborg, where the new recyclable blades are being made, has found an innovative new use for old blades, by turning them into bike shelters for the city’s cyclists. The materials that make the blades hard to recycle also make them durable and strong.
      This image shows a section of turbine blade which shelters bikes in Denmark.   Image: Siemens Gamesa via Twitter      Nine out of ten Danes own a bike, and cycling accounts for a quarter of all journeys of under 5km in the country. But the Scandinavian climate can be hard on bikes left out of doors, especially in winter.

 In Ireland, which will have 11,000 tonnes of decommissioned turbine blades to dispose of over the next four years, University College, Cork has come up with a plan to use some of them to build a bridge on a greenway - a 22km path and cycleway on the track of an old railway line.

 The designers say that as well as being structurally strong, the blades’ gentle curves will add an aesthetically attractive feature to the 5 metre span bridge across the Midleton to Youghal Greenway in East Cork which is due to open in 2023.

 In the UK meanwhile, retired blades are being used in place of steel to reinforce concrete walls by contractors building the country’s new HS2 high speed rail line.
      Image shows an old turbine blade being used to reinforce concrete.   Image: HS2 Ltd      “Reusing old turbine blades reduces waste, cuts demand for new steel and reduces the carbon generated during the production of concrete,” said HS2 innovation manager Rob Cairns.

 “If our world-first pilot project goes well, we could see a waste product from the energy industry becoming an essential material for the construction sector in the future.”

 Elsewhere, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States recently used a large section from a 100 metre blade as the roof of a small conventionally built house. Scientists have also tested the properties of decommissioned blades for use as power line poles.
  Danish company Vestas Wind Turbine Systems working with Aarhus University has created a process to chemically break down turbine blades to extract epoxy resin plastic from them which can then be used to make new blades.

 Meanwhile, Norwegian wind farm builders Akers Offshore Wind and Strathclyde University have devised a pioneering way of extracting the fibreglass from redundant turbine blades for reuse which they say could meet 50% of global glass fibre demand if implemented worldwide.

 “GRP scrap is a challenge not only for the wind power industry, but for all industries reliant on GRP materials in their production and manufacturing,'' Akers' Mats Ektvedt told Euro News.

 “This includes car manufacturing, maritime vessels, oil and gas production, construction, sporting goods and more. Our focus now is on the recycling of wind turbine blades, but our goal is to develop recovery processes robust enough to handle other kinds of waste,” he added.

 The World Economic Forum says 90% of all plastics produced worldwide are never recycled. The Forum’s Global Plastic Action Partnership is working with business and world leaders to end dumping, increase recycling and create a circular economy in plastics.
 

Turning decommissioned wind turbine blades into bridges is just one of the innovative solutions being put forward as a way of dealing with a major recycling problem facing the industry.Many wind turbine blades are now reaching the end of their lifespan. Many more are taken out of service early due to operational requirements to install bigger blades capable of producing more energy. By 2023, approximately 15,000 turbine blades will have been decommissioned across the UK and EU.In Ireland alone, over 11,000 tons of blades are due to be decommissioned by 2025. Strathclyde University has predicted that global turbine waste is set to rise from 400,000 tonnes per year in 2030 to two million tonnes by 2050.Quite apart from the sheer size of the blades, the reinforced plastic and glass fibre materials used in their construction are not biodegradable.“Wind turbine blades are extremely difficult to recycle. Ideas of what to do with them after they’re taken down range from turning them into playground slides to processing them into pellets for glues and paints,” explains Harrison O’Hara of the Skanska Costain Strabag consortium, who are building the UK high speed rail link.From blade into bridgeThe sheer strength of the material and hollow interior structure of the blades has resulted in a decision to explore the possibility of using them to replace steel in construction projects such as pedestrian bridges.In Eire, University College Cork has begun tests designed to incorporate sections of the blades into a bridge across the Middleton-Younghal Greenway.“The blades are from a decommissioned Nordex N29 turbine, 14m long. For this bridge, which has a span of 5m, we cut a short section from the blade. The blades are used as the main structural element of the bridge and are functional in the design,” says Paul Leahy, lecturer in Wind Energy Engineering.“However, they are also aesthetically attractive due to their gently curved shape, so we believe this will become a feature of interest on the greenway route. We are also looking at additional repurposed blade products such as outdoor furniture.”Cork University College is part of a wider ‘Re-Wind project’ involving experts from Queen’s University Belfast, City University of New York and Georgia Institute of Technology. Other repurposing projects being investigated by Re-Wind include electrical transmission towers, highway noise barriers and coastal wake breaks to decrease erosion.High speed rail link useA similar option has been adopted by the UK’s high speed rail link contractor, Skanska Costain Strabag. It has worked with the National Composites Centre to swap steel for retired wind turbine blades to reinforce concrete, using a process cutting carbon production by up to 90 per cent.Sections of blades will be used in temporary access roads, top sections of concrete walls and ground bearing plinths forming the base for portacabins.If these projects by Re-Wind and Skanska Costain Strabag prove successful, it could pave the way for turbine blades to become an important element within the construction industry.New innovative material circularityOther initiatives have been focusing on ways of recycling the materials that make up the blades. Danish company Vestas Wind Turbine Systems has worked with Aarhus University to develop a technique that allows the thermoset composite material to be broken down into fibre and epoxy (a class of plastics).This is followed by a chemcycling process allowing the epoxy to be broken down into base components, which can then be used for the construction of new turbine blades. It therefore creates a circularity pathway for epoxy resin, meaning no materials go to waste.The Norwegian company Akers Horizons, a part of Aker Offshore Wind, has turned its attention to glass fibre material. Working with the University of Strathclyde, it has devised a unique system for its thermal recovery and treatment.“We start with end-of-life GRP waste, which is then sorted and moved through the University of Strathclyde recovery process, ending up with reusable glass fibre for new products,” Aker’s Mats Ektvedt says. “This is the key to true product circularity.”Ektved believes this technique could be a game changer within the wider industry.“GRP scrap is a challenge not only for the wind power industry, but for all industries reliant on GRP materials in their production and manufacturing. This includes car manufacturing, maritime vessels, oil and gas production, construction, sporting goods and more,” he says.“Our focus now is on the recycling of wind turbine blades, but our goal is to develop recovery processes robust enough to handle other kinds of waste.”

Cork

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University of Cork

<p>In Ireland, over 11,000 tonnes of decommissioned turbine blades are expected to need disposal over the next four years. The University College of Cork has come up with a plan to use some of them to&nbsp;build a bridge&nbsp;on a greenway -&nbsp;a 22km path and cycleway&nbsp;on the track of an old railway line. The designers say that as well as being structurally strong, the blades’ gentle curves will add an&nbsp;aesthetically attractive feature to the 5 metre span bridge&nbsp;across the&nbsp;Midleton&nbsp;to Youghal Greenway in East Cork&nbsp;which is due to open in 2023. Cork University College is part of a wider ‘Re-Wind project’ involving experts from Queen’s University Belfast, City University of New York and Georgia Institute of Technology. Other repurposing projects being investigated by Re-Wind include electrical transmission towers, highway noise barriers and coastal wake breaks to decrease erosion.</p>