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

Revenue Potential

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)

Producing and providing business and consumer goods and services

Goods and Services

Producing electronics products for businesses and consumers, including cellular phones, personal computers, printers, servers, electronic computer components and peripherals, TVs, audio equipment, as well as household appliances, such as refrigerators, washing machines, etc.

Electronics and Appliances

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

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within other industries

Valorise waste streams - open loop

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

Design for cyclability

Transforming waste products into materials and lower value products within other industries

Open loop downcycling

Designing products to remove any barriers to recycling and enable easy recyclability

Design for recycling

'Manage' influences the use and function of physical and material elements within the urban environment. 

Manage

Infrastructure

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

Mobilise

Govern the Transition

Cross-departmental collaboration and engagement

Develop infrastructure to support resource cycling

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




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Regenerate

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

Includes measures that protect and enhance ecosystems and biodiversity both within and beyond city boundaries, as well as actions to restore degraded ecosystems.


Protect and restore local ecosystems

Ensure that household and business waste is collected and appropriately sorted (by type, label, etc.) to allow for maximum recovery of value.


Collect and sort waste to facilitate recovery

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

Businesses

A key source of waste generated by urban residents stems from single-use plastics, such as plastic bags and packaging, and other fast moving consumer goods that are produced to be cheap and disposable. If this waste is not disposed of correctly, then such residual materials can pollute the environment. Waste that is generated in cities can also find its way outside of the city, for example, being carried in water ways to pollute other water bodies. 

Systems, initiatives and infrastructure can focus on preventing these types of waste from polluting the local environment. For example, infrastructure placed in local waterways can protect natural systems by diverting plastic pollution. Furthermore, other initiatives could clean up (plastic) waste directly to restore natural systems in a safe and effective way. 

Local governments can support the implementation of solutions by establishing partnerships with and promoting existing initiatives, as well as developing and financing the infrastructures that could reduce the pollution in the local environment.  

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👕📱  Clean up pollution of fast moving consumer goods

Mixed household waste - consisting of textiles, electronics, organic and other consumer goods - can be contaminated and difficult to separate, and hence limit the  recovery of materials and value.

Source separation reduces the upstream sorting cost and ensures that downstream recyclers receive clean feedstock, thus improving their ability to capture the value from post-consumer material streams. Source separation systems can take a variety of forms, such as providing a distributed network of collection points throughout a city for residents to drop off various types of waste materials. The most successful examples of this include: collection of electronics, plastics, waste oil, fabrics, metals, bulky goods, paper, cardboard, batteries, amongst others.

Local governments can support the implementation of the solution by developing and providing the necessary infrastructure throughout the city or engage in public-private partnerships to provide source separation systems. What is more, information campaigns can help to inform residents on which types of consumer goods can be recovered, and the most effective means of disposal. 


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👕📱  Source separation and collection systems for consumer goods 

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

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

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

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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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    View Project Completion Report  Heavy metals, particulates, lead, mercury, PCBs, PAH, phalates Burning and dismantling of e-waste Air, water, soil, direct contact
 Children Under 6 Affected  Informal E-waste recycling As of June 2015 - USD 149,060 has been spent to date, and USD 77,805 remains to be spent United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), European Commission, Global Alliance for Health and Pollution (GAHP), Addax & Oryx Foundation 
City University of New York, School of Public Health
EPA Ghana
Ghana Health Service
Ghana, Ministry of Environment
Global Alliance for Health and Pollution (GAHP)
Greater Accra Scrap Dealers Association (GASDA)
Green Advocacy Ghana (GreenAd)
National Youth Authority
United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)

    
It has been eight months since Pure Earth opened the E-waste Recycling Center with automated wire-stripping units.  The project team has been assessing what is working and what is not, as we enter the next phase of the project.
Lessons learned:  While the mechanized wire-strippers currently installed work well for larger cables, they are not able to process the thin bundles of electrical cables, often coming from car electrical systems, which continue to be burned. A shredding machine, called a granulator and separator, will be installed in the E-waste Recycling Center in July 2015. This machine chops up the wires, separates the metals from the plastic coating, and dispenses the materials in two separate streams.
The project team will be onsite, working with partner organizations, Greater Accra Scrap Dealers Association and Green Advocacy Ghana, to install, test and train workers in the center on this new technology.
The project remains on schedule and on budget. Pure Earth received funds from EC/UNIDO, Comic Relief, The Addax & Oryx Foundation, and BI Reserve totaling USD 226,865 for this project. In total, USD 149,060 has been spent to date, and USD 77,805 remains to be spent.
Activity for the next phase the project will be determined after an assessment of the effectiveness of the recycling center, and with input from the local recyclers and partner NGOs.
The Problem
The Agbogbloshie scrap metal site in Accra is Ghana’s largest center for electronic waste (e-waste) recycling and disposal. Workers manually disassemble parts and burn off the plastic encasements on computer wires and refrigerator coils to recover profitable metals. The work is often done by young adults using handmade tools and without protective equipment, leaving them susceptible to respiratory diseases and overexposure to lead.
After anything of value has been stripped away, the bulk is then dumped untreated into unlined pits and waterways. An additional health hazard is the black smoke that continuously hovers over the site, resulting from piles of copper cables that are lit to burn off the plastic coatings. In order to keep the fires burning, old car tires are also added to the flames, creating a toxic environment far and wide. Air pollution from the burning affects workers as well as those living and working nearby.
Project Activity
In 2010, Blacksmith Institute, in partnership with GreenAd Ghana, the Ghana Health Service, and the City University of New York School of Public Health conducted an assessment of the occupational and environmental exposures of electronic waste recyclers in Agbogbloshie Market. The research produced comprehensive documentation that e-waste processing, especially the burning of copper wires, exposes workers, local residents and family members to hazardous levels of heavy trace elements.
Pilot Project: January-October 2014
In January 2014, Blacksmith Institute and GreenAd Ghana began a pilot project by setting up a basic e-waste recycling facility that would enable recyclers to stop burning wire and instead strip it in a way that was efficient and profitable. Funding for the pilot project came from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), through the Global Alliance for Health and Pollution (GAHP).
The first phase of the e-waste recycling facility opened on October 10, 2014.
Expansion of the Project: October 2014-June 2015
GASDA has a vision to promote Agbogbloshie as a recycling knowledge centre by setting up a model e-scrap facility that protects livelihoods while minimizing the adverse health and environment risks of scavenging and exposure to toxic substances.
During Stage 2 of the project, from October 1, 2014-June 30, 2015, more machines were purchased and workers trained. The project purchased the wires and other recyclable materials from recyclers who previously burned the materials. Workers were trained to use the appropriate machines to cleanly disassemble the materials and directly export the metals, plastics, and other sellable items. In this way, recyclers would maintain profits without polluting, and trained workers would increase profits by being in direct contact with exporters and selling clean materials that have not been burned. GASDA, which employed the trained workers, used some of the profits to maintain the facilities and machines.
Extension into 2016
The project has been extended into 2016. We are currently making site improvements and setting up the maintenance fund. As there was no market for stripped or shredded plastics, these will be encapsulated in concrete and a thorough report about project successes and failures will be published. In addition, two monitors are now on site to collect PM2.5 data.
Learn more in The Pollution Blog: Related:

Ghana’s Tech Dump:The Untold Story (Magnum Photos)

Watch: Learn more on the Ghana projects page.    

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Accra

Ghana

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GreenAd Ghana

Blacksmith Institute

Municipality of Accra

<p>Informal e-waste recycling practices at Agbogbloshie Market in Accra, Ghana, were widely recognized as unsafe and inefficient. In response, the city of Accra convened multiple national and international partners in an effort to improve recycling practices at the market. One outcome of these efforts is an e-waste recycling pilot facility set up by Blacksmith Institute and GreenAd Ghana. Workers learn how to disassemble items safely and cleanly so valuable parts can be sold at higher value.</p>