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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

Impact on increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

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)

Contributing to the improvement of biodiversity including species diversity, total number of protected species, and ecosystem health

Biodiversity

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

Agri/Food

Extracting resources and processing them to produce materials for use bysociety

Materials and Fuels

Producing and providing business and consumer goods and services

Goods and Services

Providing specialist services to support consumers, businesses, andgovernments

Professional Services

Societal 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

Providing various support services for businesses and governments, such as research, testing, certification and consulting services, cleaning and maintenance services, security and protection services, legal, accounting and bookkeeping services, information management, data processing, and business process outsourcing services

Research & Commercial Services

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

Producing basic and specialty chemicals, inks, agricultural chemical such as fertilisers and pesticides, plastics including packaging, and rubber

Chemical and Plastic

Extracting and gathering wood through forestry and producing wood and paper products

Wood and Paper

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

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

Utilise bio-based, reusable, non-toxic and non-critical materials

Regenerative materials

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within the same industry

Valorise waste streams - closed loop

Designing to reduce waste during production and use

Design out waste

Designing to enable multiple uses and lifecycles of a product and its materials

Design for cyclability

Designing products that are made to last and to ensure longer use

Design for durability

Using materials that can be easily reused or recycled after use

Reusable, recyclable materials and inputs

Designing products so they produce as little waste as possible during production

Design for minimal waste

Designing products to be reused for the same or different purposes in multiple lifecycles

Design for reuse

Designing products to resist damage and wear, and serve a long and useful life.

Design for physical durability

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

Inform

Encourage workplace training

'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

Legislation

Bans

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

Incentivise

 Fiscal Frameworks

Charges and tariffs

Information campaigns

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

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Rethink

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

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

Maintain and repair city-owned spaces and infrastructure to increase longevity, and support opportunities for residents to do the same for privately owned items and property

Support reuse, repair, remanufacturing, maintenance of existing resources, products, spaces & infrastructure

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 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

Governments

Businesses support the innovation and implementation of circular strategies. Yet innovations and startups that close loops and facilitate reuse often face additional challenges, due to the lack of infrastructure that supports circular initiatives for example physical and digital infrastructure to support reverse logistics.

Sustainable business ecosystems connect circular businesses around common problems and provide coordinated support, education and financing opportunities for these businesses to operate and scale together. This solution stimulates the local economy, which can promote local circular job opportunities in the future, and provides an attractive and supportive environment for more circular businesses to start up and scale the city.

The local government may partner with innovation ecosystems and circular domain experts to create training modules and facilitation programmes for small businesses, making knowledge resources available to small businesses looking to go circular. Local governments may also provide financial support - either directly or in partnership with financial institutions - to target and stimulate ecosystems around specific circular business models. 


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🍏  Sustainable food and agriculture business ecosystems

Single-use packaging is ubiquitous in food services and retail, yet it is increasingly linked to multiple health, sanitation and environmental problems - polluting both the city, its waterways  and surrounding ecosystems. 

Reusable food and drink containers can help to design out and eliminate, where possible, the use of single-use packaging in food services and retail. Reusable containers can be used, washed and reused multiple times to mitigate plastics pollution at its source.

Commonly, the implementation of reusable food and drinks containers relies on a strong collaboration with businesses to adopt such schemes. Yet, local governments can play an important role in promoting and supporting these behaviours. This support can come in a variety of forms, for example, awareness raising campaigns aimed at residents, as well as  promoting businesses that are engaging with reusable food and drink containers. Experimental zones can also be used to test and encourage the use of reusable containers. Local governments can, in partnership with regional and national governments, regulate the use of certain materials and packaging in the city, which incentivises reusable packaging for food and drink.

*Caution: with their often higher per-unit impact when compared with single-use alternatives, implementing reusable container schemes must be balanced with behaviour change away from a throw-away mindset to ensure that these containers are used multiple times, otherwise the expected environmental impact may not be realised. *


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🍏  Reusable food and drink containers

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

Slow strategies aim to keep materials in use for as long as possible, for example through design for durability and repairability. A more circular economy is also a slower one: materials, components, and products—and even buildings and infrastructure—that we lock in stocks are made to last. This will lower material demand in the long run, in essence also serving to narrow resource flows.

Slow

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).

Regenerate

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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 Dive Brief:
The City Council of Berkeley, California voted unanimously last week to approve a sweeping ordinance aimed at eliminating single-use foodware by 2020, as reported by Berkeleyside and other publications.In addition to mandating compostable foodware for to-go orders and reusable dine-in foodware, the Single Use Disposable Foodware and Litter Reduction Ordinance will also require businesses to implement a $0.25 charge for disposable cups by January 2020. The city must report initial results by 2022."With the collapse of the overseas recycling market and an influx of food- and beverage-related litter on our streets and in our waterways, waiting is no longer an option," said Councilmember Sophie Hahn, the legislation's primary sponsor, in a statement. "Recycling is no longer a solution — if we want to save the planet, it’s time to reduce, reuse and compost."Dive Insight:
Berkeley enjoys a storied reputation as one of the nation's foremost sustainability trailblazers: It became the first U.S. city to enact a ban on expanded polystyrene products, launched one of the country's first curbside recycling programs in 1973, and committed to an ambitious "zero waste" by 2020 goal with its 2009 Climate Action Plan. However, as noted in the ordinance, "Despite these achievements, Berkeley has not addressed the significant increase in takeout food packaging littering city streets, filling storm drains, requiring management in the waste stream, polluting our waterways, Bay and ocean, and threatening both human and animal health ... To reach its Zero Waste goals, the City must reduce use of single-use food and beverage packaging."
According to the legislative text, food packaging waste contributes to a significant portion of local litter, with city residents generating upward of 40 million single-use cups per year. The new law, which Hahn and Mayor Jesse Arreguín describe as "the most ambitious, comprehensive legislation to reduce throw-away foodware in the United States," aims to rectify this problem by targeting a wide range of take-out accoutrements — including straws, lids, stirrers, cup spill plugs, napkins and utensils. 
Berkeley's Zero Waste Commission has recommended a number of city-sponsored initiatives to support the transition process for businesses, including technical assistance and a mini-grant program to help cover one-time costs. Establishments that can't afford the financial burden will be permitted to opt out of the required changes, and WIC or CalFresh recipients — along with individuals with "significant disabilities" — will be exempt from the disposable cup fee.
Supporters laud the ordinance as setting an essential precedent for other cities around the country, describing it as a direct rebuke of plastic producers' ongoing efforts to engage in waste issues.
"The impact of the Berkeley ordinance will be dramatic," UPSTREAM Program Director Miriam Gordon told Waste Dive in an email. "Policy makers all over the world are seeking solutions to the tsunami of plastics in the ocean. So far, most have focused on eliminating a specific plastic product, like straws. The plastics-only approach results in a transition to paper, fiber-ware, and bioplastic, each of which results in a host of other devastating impacts on the environment. By addressing ALL disposables, Berkeley has created a model that really gets at the heart of the problem."
Kate O'Neill, associate professor at UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, had a more measured response to the ordinance's passage. Despite praising the law's relatively broad scope, O'Neill raised concerns to Waste Dive over whether Berkeley has secured "the right kind of industrial composting facilities, at the right scale." The ordinance specifies that all foodware must be accepted by municipal collection programs, independently certified and free of fluorinated chemicals; however, these products, in addition to posing a processing challenge for some organics facilities, can also have higher environmental costs.
O'Neill also expressed reservations over the disposable cup fee's cost impact on low income residents — especially given the Bay Area's skyrocketing cost of living — as well as its potential to lull residents into a false sense of complacency regarding their role in the waste cycle.
"Berkeley should keep in mind that plastic problems here are dwarfed by those in the rest of the world," commented O'Neill via email. "Hopefully residents will be inspired to act on that problem as well, not just sit back and assume they've done their bit — one of the real potential problems with local policy initiatives."
Follow Rina Li on Twitter 

Berkeley

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Municipality of Berkeley

<p>Single use foodware harm wildlife, mainly by contributing to marine pollution, cause street litter and greenhouse gas emissions, before turning into waste sent to landfills. Cities have thus decided, such as the city of Berkeley, to restrict or ban some single-use products.</p>