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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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This collection features a selection of case studies, based on the global *Circularity Gap Reports*, that can mitigate climate breakdown by reducing virgin material consumption, waste and greenhouse gas emissions. The latest **[Circularity Gap Report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023#download)** reveals that the global economy is now only 7.2% circular and outlines how circular solutions across four sectors can bring global planetary boundaries back within safe limits. 

In the six years of the *Circularity Gap Report*, the global economy has extracted and used unprecedented amounts of materials. The first edition of the *Report *in 2018 found that global circularity was 9.1% and it has decreased every year since—leaving a Circularity Gap of over 90%. If this trend continues, we will have to find more and better solutions to combat the negative effects of climate change. This is why we have identified case studies from across the globe—based on the needs of society and planetary health—that serve as real-world examples of the circular economy in action.

Circle Economy is a not-for-profit organisation working to accelerate the circular transition. Through the *Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative*, our mission is to deliver an annual global Circularity Metric that measures the state of the world economy and identifies key levers to transition to global circularity. With nature as our guide, we work alongside cross-sector stakeholders from academia, businesses, NGOs and governments to provide a powerful combination of practical and scalable interventions that transform circular opportunities into realities. 


To learn more about these interventions to accelerate the circular transition, read the latest [Circularity Gap Report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023#download), as well as previous editions of the global [Circularity Gap Reports](https://www.circularity-gap.world/global).

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Global Circularity Gap Report 2023

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Article / Report

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 social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families.

Social 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

Impact on the ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Producing transporation equipment and providing services for thetransportation of goods and people

Transportation and Logistics

Producing transportation equipment for the movement of goods and people by air, rail, sea, and land, including airplanes, spacecraft and military equipment, ships, boats, rail locomotives and rolling stock, motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers, and related equipment, as well as repair services for such equipment

Transportation Equipment

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

Industry peers to industry peer collaboration to create joint value and identify synergies

Industry collaboration

'Mobilise' sets the direction of and builds momentum towards long-term change, while also determining how this direction is determined and governed.

Mobilise

Visions and Ambitions

Roadmaps and strategies and targets

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

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

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

Businesses

Governments

Designing vehicles for maximum efficiency of resources is key in the circular economy. Circular design can allow vehicles to be manufactured using less resources, be easily remanufactured, parts to be swapped in and out (‘modular’), and/or space in the vehicle be reconfigured. Whereas digital technology can advance resource effective manufacturing techniques and support the automation of vehicles for sharing and mobility-as-a-service schemes.

For instance, vehicles can be ‘retrofitted’ to run off batteries, remanufactured, or designed to be dismantled and allow the reuse of parts and recycling of materials. And when batteries cannot be reused to power a passenger car any longer, they can be reused for less demanding tasks, such as storage of electricity from wind turbines and solar farms.

Cities can support business innovation towards these directions via direct financial and fiscal business support, by collaborating and engaging with circular businesses through urban Living Labs or other mechanisms, as well as setting up eco-industrial parks where by-products of one company can become a resource for another. 


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🚌  Circular vehicle design and circular business models

A considerable resource footprint is taken up by our need for mobility. In particular, two resource types are used: the materials to build transport technologies and vehicles like cars, trains and airplanes; plus, predominantly, the fossil fuels burned to power them.



Mobility

- Vehicle lightweighting (reduced demand for metal input into the vehicle manufacturing industry
- Increased fuel efficiency
- Autonomous driving (safer driving requires less need for crash-resistant cars)
- Use smaller cars

Saving: 1.22 Gt emissions and 1.24 Gt material use

🚗 Vehicle design improvements

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

Policies

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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

The framework consists of 21 complementary interventions, across six scenarios - one for each of the six societal needs we model. These interventions can mitigate climate impact by curbing GHG emissions

Note: interventions are currently focused on:
- 🏠 Housing 
- 🍎 Nutrition
- 🚗 Mobility
- 👚📺 Consumables
- 👩‍⚕️👨‍⚕️ Healthcare
-  🔊 Communication

These 21 interventions are spread across six societal needs and wants, with a set of solutions. Within these solutions are strategies on ’how to get there'.  

The framework moves beyond incremental action and provides solutions that will require behavioral change (dietary shifts towards less meat consumption, for example) and the adoption of state-of-the-art technologies in the industry to mitigate emissions in hard-to-abate sectors (such as steel manufacturing). It illustrates how continued globalisation can benefit from the uptake of digital solutions. The combined interventions showcase the mitigation potential that begins where the current country pledges end; illustrating the additional impact our interventions can bring to the NDCs. In short, the interventions provide input for a more profound fundamental transformation than the more current pathways that make up the vast majority of NDCs. 

Together, the combined interventions can almost double the current global Circularity Metric of 8.6%, bringing it to 17%. 

This results in:
• Shrinking global material use and extraction by 28%. 
• Cutting global GHG emissions by 39%—fully closing the Emissions Gap as defined in our report and taking into account the updated NDCs.
• Allowing the world to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping at 1.5-degrees of warming by 2032.

*This framework was developed in the Circularity Gap Report 2021. Read more about it [here](https://www.circle-economy.com/resources/circularity-gap-report-2021)*






Global Circularity Gap Report

An intervention-based framework for nations and stakeholders working towards circular countries

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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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   By 2050, an expected 67% of the population will live in urban areas [Towards a more urban world (2015)]. As cities grow, so too does the demand for specialised vehicle designs and architectures that could meet evolving mobility needs of different users in urban and suburban scenarios. The design principles of flexibility and modularity bring an opportunity to ensure urban-readiness of nextgen of urban electric vehicles in European cities, to be properly integrated into the local transport networks, in alignment with the SUMPs (Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans) defined by the authorities. The European Commission proactively funding urban-readiness and urban mobility Aiming to address this challenge, last year the European Commission launched their H2020 call to trigger R&D initiatives on next generation electrified vehicles for urban and suburban use (LC-GV08-2020). The call ensured coverage of a broader range of mobility needs, including 3 different application domains: personal mobility (e.g. monowheels, electric scooters, hoverboards), multipassenger vehicles (owned or shared, up to M1 category), and commercial vehicles (up to N1 category). Our URBANIZED project falls into the latter category, working to future proof cities with sustainable last-mile delivery by solving the trade-offs between “one size fits all” and “design for purpose” in the development of flexible and modular all-electric Light Commercial Vehicles (LCVs). Out of 28 proposals received, the EC ultimately selected a total of 5 projects among the 3 domains, accounting for a total budget of over €26.64M (over €20.68M in funding requested). The four other projects funded under this same call are set to make great strides in the field of urban mobility. Meet the projects driving electric vehicle innovation DREEM (Designing useR centric E-kickscooters & business models for Enhancing interModality) Coordinated by Punch Torino SPAGoal: finalise and test a safer and modular electric kick scooter (e-KS) for personal urban and suburban mobility LEONARDO (MicrovehicLE fOr staNd-Alone and shaReD mObility) Coordinated by Universita Degli Studi di FirenzeGoal: develop a new microvehicle based on the smart fusion of monowheel and scooter concepts Multi-Moby (Safe, Secure, High Performing Multi-Passanger and Multi-Commercial Uses Affordable EVs) Coordinated by Infineon Technologies Austria AGGoal: build a fleet of multi-passenger and multi-purpose commercial vans, addressing the development of technology for safe, efficient, and affordable urban electric vehicles. REFLECTIVE (Reconfigurable Light Electric Vehicle) Coordinated by Teknologian Tutkimuskes Kus VTT OYGoal: develop and demonstrate an innovative, modular vehicle concept fit for urban needs: zero emission, compact, safe, and rightsized for the mission. Collaboration between the 5 initiatives From the URBANIZED consortium, we have started a proactive dialogue with the other 4 projects to define a liaison body that allows for open and regular communication across all 5 initiatives. The aim is to facilitate exchange of insights that all 5 consortia can build upon, and strengthen networking between all partners, so relevant synergies can be identified leading to new potential collaborations.  Want to learn more about urban-readiness and the future of urban mobility? Sign up for our newsletter and connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.  

Europe

Turin

Florence

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European Commission

URBANIZED

DREEM Project

Punch Torino

LEONARDO Project

Università degli Studi di Firenze

<p>Anticipating the growing and changing demand for better adapted and designed vehicle can be both triggered by innovative projects and municipal authorities.</p>