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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 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 increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

Impact on the quantity or quality of jobs, and shifts in the labour market

Jobs

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

Direct and indirect reduction in economic costs

Cost Savings

Direct and indirect effects that increase revenues or the potential for new revenues, for example from new products, customer segments, partnerships or business models

Revenue Potential

Efficiency gains on operations or transactions either through cultural or technological shifts

Productivity

Scalability

Reduced use and withdrawal of water and rate of recycling and reuse of water

Save Water (SDG6)

Producing agricultural products and processing them into food and beverageproducts for consumption

Agri/Food

Producing and gathering crop and animal products from land and water through farming, hunting, and fishing

Agriculture

Processing and producing food and beverages for consumption

Food and Beverage

Ensure renewable, reusable, non-toxic resources are utilised as materials and energy in an efficient way

Prioritise regenerative resources

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

Replace freshwater with less impactful alternatives and enact water efficiency measures

Regenerative water

Designing to reduce waste during production and use

Design out waste

Engage with the government on circular policies and programmes

Government collaboration

Enacting measures that optimise water use

Water efficiency

Designing products so they use as little materials, water, energy, etc. as possible during use

Design for resource efficiency

Participating in government programmes that support and advance the circular economy

Government programmes

'Inform' increases the overall levels of awareness and builds the necessary skills and knowledge around the circular economy to foster long-term change.

Inform

Integrate principles of circularity into primary, secondary and tertiary curriculum and conduct workplace trainings

 Education and Curriculum

Data, knowledge & information sharing

'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

'Regulate' changes the rules of the systems to achieve compliance through enforcement. 


Regulate

 Regulation

Monitoring & enforcement

'Incentivise' sends market signals and support to businesses, citizens and governments to promote certain activities.

Incentivise

Public-private partnerships

Public-civil partnerships

Awareness raising events

Economic Frameworks

Information campaigns

 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

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

High-level changes to policy and practice (such as taxation systems, investment and procurement guidelines and criteria) that disincentivize activities that perpetuate linear economic systems, as well as vision-setting (goals, roadmaps) to catalyze
action on circularity across the city

Eliminate linear incentives and set goals and incentives for circularity

Prioritize solutions that use the power of functioning ecosystems as infrastructure to provide natural services to benefit society and the environment; consider nature-based replacements for grey infrastructure.

Promote solutions inspired and supported by nature

Ensure that infrastructure and built assets in the city are designed and upgraded to be as resource-efficient as possible.

Design infrastructure and the built environment for resource efficiency

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

Businesses

Communities

Governments

Biodiversity is fundamental to maintain the variety of crops and livestock needed to support and preserve ecosystem services that sustain our food system and wellbeing. As cities densify and expand in size, they typically encroach on surrounding biodiverse areas, leading to the progressive degradation of ecosystem services. In turn, this pushes away urban food systems that are dependent on material inputs often sourced outside the urban region. 

Edible green infrastructures are solutions that reimagine cities as productive sources of food, can boost local biodiversity as well as foster social cohesion. These infrastructures can take a variety of forms and are inspired by nature, for example, planting edible trees and plants throughout a city which are free to pick for residents.

Local governments can promote investments in edible green infrastructures (strategically planned multi-scale networks of different kinds of urban green and blue spaces) to create new biodiverse and productive spaces within the urban region, as well as rehabilitating polluted lands to improve soil health and productivity. Urban and spatial planning can also be used to permit these infrastructures, as well as enable residents to create their own. What is more, such solutions can be integrated within urban planning projects, for example, rain gardens and rain barrels, to reduce urban stormwater runoff and risk of floodings while redirecting and reusing urban rain and stormwater to supply urban farmers.


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🍏  Edible green infrastructures

With the continued growth of urban populations, cities are commonly facing a key challenge: how can we feed our residents with sufficient healthy and sustainable food? 

More resource-efficient methods and technologies for urban agriculture present opportunities to cultivate the urban landscape, for example through hydroponics and aquaponics systems. Resource-efficient systems can require less space, be more water efficient, and minimise inputs of artificial fertilisers and pesticides, and could be key to secure a sustainable and healthy future for cities.

Resource-efficiency in urban farming methods could mean prioritising renewable energies, for example, solar/wind energy, biogas, making efficient use of different resources, for example, reuse or recycle of heat, water, nutrients and/or spaces, applying cutting-edge emission reduction technologies, and reusing waste or by-products from urban sources, for example,  industries and households. 

Local governments can leverage land use and spatial planning tools to create and maintain a resource-efficient infrastructure including concepts like aquaponics, indoor agriculture, vertical farming, rooftop production, and edible walls. As well as support innovation in new urban agriculture technologies through in-kind and financial support for start-ups. 


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🍏  Resource-efficient food production

Current dominant, globalized food systems trigger far-reaching detrimental socioeconomic and environmental effects. As such, they struggle to meet the food demands of a growing population and face external shocks, such as resource scarcity, climate change and health crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Local governments are directly or indirectly connected to all stages of the food value chain. For this reason, it is importanto for them to leverage this strategic position and develop an initial and collective vision, setting out transformational targets, monitoring and evaluation frameworks, and key action areas and solutions urgently required to transform food systems—from food consumption and production to waste prevention and management.

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🍏  Targets and roadmaps for a circular food system

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).

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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Nairobi

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Municipality of Nairobi

<p>In regards of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals n°11 “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” and the National Food and Nutrition Security Policy, The Nairobi City County government has studied its food system, by identifying its gaps, to influence it towards sustainability, through a largely detailed food strategy. </p>