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This collection was curated by the Circle Economy team from Knowledge Hub case studies for businesses, local and national governments around the world to find inspiration in practical examples of the circular economy. 

Visit the <a href="https://circle-economy.com" target="_blank">Circle Economy website</a> for more information and for more publications on the circular economy.

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Circle Economy

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Business case

Providing recreational and cultural services, including hotels, resorts, casinos, sport and fitness centers, stadiums, golf courses and amusement parks, restaurants, bars, pubs, fast-food or take-out facilities, as well as libraries and museums

Hospitality and Tourism

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

Industries

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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

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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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Innofest

Innofest is an EU-supported initiative that promotes the use of events and festivals as living labs and provides support for entrepreneurs to test and scale their circular and sustainable innovations at events throughout Europe.

Innofest: Promoting events as living labs

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

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

 In many parts of the world, clean drinking water, food, and sanitary facilities are not a given. Using space travel technology developed by the European Space Agency, the Semilla Sanitation Hub is now able to provide all three. After testing its urine filtration method at the 2018 edition of the Eurosonic Noorderslag festival, running a wastewater filtration test at DGTL and accelerating the process at the Into The Great Wide Open festival by teaming up with Nijhuis Industries, Semilla Sanitation ultimately completed the testing process at Eurosonic Noorderslag by also filtering blackwater. Semilla Sanitation is currently developing plans with Care Kenya to roll out the filtration technology in Kenya. The four pilots furthermore opened up a new market for Semilla Sanitation, as various festivals turned out to be open to making their sanitary facilities more sustainable. Over the past year, Semilla Sanitation’s CEO, Peter Scheer, also set up a water saving project in partnership with the organizers of the Zwarte Cross festival, reusing shower wastewater to flush the toilets. 

Semilla Sanitations

Semilla Sanitations is a wastewater treatment toilet that allows to provide clean drinking water from wastewater. The technology was tested and scaled through four festivals.

Semilla Sanitations: Circular wastewater treatment toilets

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

 One of the main challenges in the energy transition is to ensure an ongoing supply of hot water. Hamwells has developed a heat recovery system that uses the heat of shower wastewater to preheat clean shower water for the next person to take a shower.
At the Into The Great Wide Open festival, Hamwells tested its system at the festival campsite. With so many people using the shower, Hamwells was able to verify whether the 60% energy savings achieved in the lab held up in real life. They did. An added benefit of testing the shower system at a festival campsite was that it allowed Hamwells to study whether the system would continue to work as intended when subjected to large amounts of dirt. Coming through this part of the test with flying colors as well, the shower system is now ready for its market launch. 

Hamwells

Hamwells uses the heat of shower wastewater to preheat clean shower water for the next person to take a shower. It was tested at the Into The Great Wide Open festival, with the support of Innofest.