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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 increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

Scalability

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Reduced use of virgin materials and/or an increase of the use of secondary and bio-based materials

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

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)

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

Reduce Energy Consumption

Providing specialist services to support consumers, businesses, andgovernments

Professional 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

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

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 the same industry

Valorise waste streams - closed loop

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within other industries

Valorise waste streams - open loop

Engage with the government on circular policies and programmes

Government collaboration

Engaging in discussions with government bodies and policymakers to push for regulations that support the circular economy

Advocacy for circular economy policy

Other

Data, knowledge & information sharing

Conduct research

Subsidies

Living labs

 Develop research, structure knowledge, encourage innovation networks and disseminate findings with integrity


Strengthen and advance knowledge

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

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Rethink

**Harmonize with nature** by promoting infrastructure, production systems and sourcing that allows natural ecosystems to thrive




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Regenerate

Use longer and more often by extending and intensifying use of existing resources, products, spaces and infrastructure

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Reuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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       Metropolitan Food Systems     
       Metropolitan Food Systems     
       Metropolitan Food Systems     
 

3D Printing in the Circular City explores the potential to provide an innovative way to reduce the municipal waste volume through recycling household plastics waste, locally with large scale 3D-printing.The design failure of plastics“Plastic packaging has a major design failure”, claim the lead researchers in the project Panos Sakkas and Foteini Setaki, founders of The New Raw and researchers in the project 3D Printing in the Circular City at AMS Institute. “In most cases, it is used a single time, before throwing it in the trash. This results in the fact that 24,5% the municipal waste in Amsterdam is plastic”.Panos and Foteini strongly believe that the design failure in plastic packaging can be solved by reinventing, redesigning, and reimaging the material cycle itself. The current “make-take-dispose” economy is no longer sustainable. By managing plastic as a cycle, rather than the conventional linear supply chain, it is possible to create a spiral material loop which will constantly be fed with the plastic waste of cities.New applications for recycled plasticsThe project 3D Printing in the Circular City explored circular possibilities to expand the applications of recycled plastic. Studying how to turn plastic waste into a strong printing material was a major part of the research. Local plastic waste streams are examined and assessed to define their utilization patterns and recycling potential. The researchers tested a selection of materials in the laboratories of TU Delft to assess their mechanical properties. Plastics with the right mechanical properties are recycled into a material engineered specifically for 3d printing.

   Roboat is the world’s first major research program on autonomous floating vessels in metropolitan areas. It allows for creating dynamic infrastructures, transportation of goods and people, and environmental sensing on Amsterdam’s canals. After working on 1:4 and 1:2 scale prototypes in the first three years of research, we are now working on the full-scale prototype. 
  The full-scale prototype of Roboat - at the end of the fourth year of research (Q4 2020) we officially presented the full-scale design!
   While the first prototypes of self-driving cars are taking to the road, Amsterdam ushers in a new chapter in the international push for autonomous vehicles. Roboat is the result of innovative large-scale research that explores and tests the rich possibilities for autonomous systems on water. It represents a fantastic opportunity and privilege for the city of Amsterdam to have the world’s most prominent scientists work on solutions with autonomous boats - especially in a location where water and technology have been linked for ages. 
      
 Roboat offers a great alternative to current waste collection and transport systems.



 Using LiDAR technology, Roboat builds a picture of the city from millions of data points, which is then used for navigation and classification of objects.

  
   Roboat is a joint research program of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute). The City of Amsterdam, Amsterdam’s water company Waternet and the City of Boston are supportive of the 5-year program. The novel robotic boat is easy to manufacture, highly maneuverable, and capable of accurate trajectory tracking in both indoor and outdoor environments.The project allows for innovations in various domains, stands strong with top research and knowledge expertise and receives univocal support. Areas of innovation are for instance assembly, sensing and waste removal. The principal investigator and professor of MIT Carlo Ratti highlighted the dynamic and temporary floating infrastructure such as bridge or stages that can assemble on demand in a matter of hours. 
      “By applying Roboat in a city like Amsterdam with busy canals we have a great opportunity to improve the control system for autonomous navigation in urban environments. This is something that has not been shown before in other projects for autonomous vessels.”   Professor at MIT Senseable City Lab & AMS PI            
   Roboat offers enormous possibilities in terms of environmental exploration and sensing. Roboats could also clear the canals from waste. The floating dumpsters can play a key role in source separation when other types of waste are added to the equation. Since the current paradigm requires that residents take different types of trash to distinct locations, the inconvenience and complexity frequently result in lower recovery rates for recyclables and environmentally harmful waste. In response, Amsterdam is keen on significantly improving waste separation rates by 2020.Roboat uses Laser Image Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data for localization and mapping, as LiDAR data is more direct and robust and localization needs an offline cloud map, because mapping must occur before localization. 
  Laserscape - or how Roboat sees the canals of Amsterdam
      “In ten years’ time, when Roboat has been developed into a commercial product that navigates the local waters, Amsterdam’s canals could again be used intensively for goods transport. Just like three centuries ago.”              
   Project OutlineThe first prototypes of Roboat were tested in the waters of Amsterdam in 2017 where a workshop was hosted in the fall to mark the end of the first project year. The event built connections and shared progress with members of the Amsterdam academic, industry and public communities and facilitated conversations and collaborations with AMS Institute researchers.In October 2018, a large Roboat demonstration was held and small-scale prototypes were tested on the waters of the Marineterrein Amsterdam, AMS Institute’s new location. For a city that is so closely built to the water, this showcase project clearly illustrates a natural fit with the institute. Now in 2020, the team is working on the full-scale prototype in the garage of AMS Institute, right next to the waterfront of Marineterrein Amsterdam.Beyond Amsterdam, the proposed fleet of waste-collecting vehicles has the potential to provide infrastructural improvements in other water-based cities, where the need for a nimble waste collection system is even more dire. 
    Duration:    August 2016 - August 2021   
   Related Information:    
  

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Amsterdam

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Municipality of Amsterdam and Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Studies

<p>The Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, a public-private institute founded in 2014, aims to find innovative solutions for urban challenges, placing themselves at the forefront of international metropolitan development. It aims to address such challenges through education, research and valorisation and data, and has enacted a number of projects to this end; the Institute uses the city of Amsterdam as a ‘living lab’, but is international in its nature and hopes to create solutions that can be scaled and applied to metropolises around the world. The city of Amsterdam is in full support of the Institute, making financial contributions, as well as sharing data, allowing the use of the city as a testing and piloting locale, and providing access to its people, networks and organisations.&nbsp;</p>