Newsletter no. 3 - December 2021
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Dear reader,
For the past year, you have been following, sharing and communicating the activities of the Circular Cities Declaration and its signatories. This has helped increase the visibility of this initiative, highlighted by the CCD’s involvement in a COP26 session on Circular Economy and Local Governments. Here, Rotterdam’s vice-Mayor Arno Bonte presented the Declaration, noting that becoming a CCD signatory has made it easier for his city to get access to EU funding.
Just before that COP session, the Declaration gained its 60th signatory with the City of Aachen. The city sees this as a major step in its efforts to speed up the transition to a circular economy, alleviate existing challenges and pave the path to a more sustainable future. Aachen believes that citizen participation is one of the keys to achieving this goal. It shares this vision with Izmit, the first Turkish signatory of the Declaration. Izmit organizes solid waste management trainings for first and secondary school students, provides environmental and recycling trainings in all schools, and is placing recycling containers all over the city.
In addition to new signatories, the Declaration has also welcomed two new support partners. The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the EIT Circular Economy Community both have a wide network of circular economy experts and stakeholders around the EU whose knowledge and experience can greatly contribute to achieving the goals of the Declaration and support the circular journey of our signatories.
These developments have created a good foundation for the Declaration’s activities to continue and evolve into 2022. We hope to see you again next year. For now, happy holidays and thank you for reading!
The CCD Team |
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COP26 Session: Circular economy & local governments: sustainable resource management to mitigate climate change
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1. City in the Spotlight: Glasgow
Last summer, the City of Glasgow (600,000 inhabitants) became the first UK signatory of the Circular Cities Declaration. The city, whose name is derived from the Gaelic word Glaschu (translated as ‘dear green place’) is aiming to become one of Europe’s most sustainable cities. Befitting the host of COP26, the Glasgow City Council recently took major steps towards its goal of net-zero carbon by 2030 with the unanimous approval of the Glasgow Climate Plan. Glasgow is also a leader in low carbon development as showcased in numerous initiatives, for example the European Smart City Project RUGGEDISED, where Glasgow is a lighthouse city.
Glasgow is committed to helping local businesses adopt sustainable business practices, by encouraging them to reuse and repair goods previously destined for landfill. Through a partnership approach with Zero Waste Scotland, Glasgow City Council and Circle Economy, its business community has embraced these circular economy business models, aiming to become future proof by delivering closed-loop value chains and driving innovative solutions that will ultimately reduce their climate impact.
In Glasgow, the textile sector has shown the most advancement and the city has convened a textile forum to develop a strategic plan for the sector by 2023, ahead of the 2025 landfill ban on textiles. The forum will try to answer how the sector will look like without residual waste, while aiming to stimulate community engagement and business. The construction sector aims to follow a similar path. Glasgow is a follower of London in the European CIRCuIT project on circular construction, aiming to replicate its decision makers forum. Zero Waste Scotland wants to scale up what Glasgow starts there to a national level.
Glasgow’s main challenge is to translate its commitments and ambitions into change on the ground. The city is good at building community and momentum, and has a strong commitment from all relevant actors, but is sometimes struggling with practical implication and achieving systemic change. As part of the CCD, it hopes to learn more about useful tools from other cities and get a better understanding of how to communicate externally its circular economy achievements and how they add value for the citizens.
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Izmit uses permaculture to advance circularity
Izmit, the first Turkish signatory of the European Circular Cities Declaration, has long been committed to address sustainability in effective ways. Its application of permaculture in the Kabaoğlu Social Facilities is a good example. The main purpose of permaculture is to create an ecological and sustainable system...read more
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Circle Economy analyses Prague material flows to help city's circular transition
In 2019 the Amsterdam-based CCD support partner Circle Economy, in collaboration with the local NGO INCIEN and the City of Prague, analysed the material flows, GHG emissions and value generation of Prague’s economy. Their goal? To provide the city with action plans for key industries to embed the circular economy into their practices...read more
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Roskilde and Høje-Taastrup showcase their circular CDW activities in CityLoops
As part of the CityLoops project, the Danish CCD signatories Roskilde and Høje-Taastrup are piloting a series of demonstration actions to close the loop in Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW). In two YouTube videos they provide an overview of some of the most important activities they have undertaken so far. In Roskilde, the Musicon district...read more
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Turku launches Circular Turku Roadmap
Over the last two years, the city of Turku convened 200+ local and regional stakeholders to design interventions that enable the transition to a circular economy and help address greenhouse gas emissions in a systemic manner, beyond territorial and sectoral boundaries. These interventions are gathered in the Circular Turku Roadmap...read more
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- CCD Signatories webinar (18 January 2022): The fourth CCD webinar will focus on urban metabolism as a tool for planning and decision making in circular cities. More information will be announced in the coming months via the signatories mailing list. In the meantime, take a look at some of the previous CCD webinars here.
- Loop Murcia (7 - 13 February 2022): Murcia is a leader in circular economy and wastewater treatment, which it is approaching through a municipal strategy, European projects, and public-private partnerships. To showcase its successes, share lessons learnt, and continue to push forward circularity, Murcia is convening circular economy fair Loop Murcia.
- LOOPS 2.0 (16 December 2021): LOOPS is a live webinar series committed to exploring innovation in the circular economy. The episode on 16 December (11-12 CET) will include a talk with ION4RAW and TARANTULA, two Horizon 2020 projects recovering critical raw materials by using novel technologies to achieve a sustainable recovery.
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Apply for the circular economy related EU R&I funding in the 2022 Horizon Europe call! Submit your project proposal for the 2022 Horizon Europe €10 million call on Circular Cities and Regions Initiative’s project development assistance (CCRI-PDA).
Applications can be submitted on the Funding and Tenders Portal until 15 February 2022 (17 CET). Read more…
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Join the Circular Economy Courses of the Ellen Macarthur Foundation if you want to deepen your knowledge of the circular economy. The EMF has four learning opportunities to choose from.
In addition to the courses, the organisation also offers circular economy courses from other institutions, as well as MOOC's. Read more...
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Are you interested in learning how to turn urban bio-waste streams into value-added products in your city or region? And do you want to exchange ideas and network with cities with similar goals?
Join the CIRCULAR BIOCARBON project’s City Interest Group and benefit from direct exchange with project partners, site visits, replication and training workshops as well as webinars!
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- CCD signatory Copenhagen features in one of the nine episodes of the Power of the Public Plate, a podcast series developed by ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability and the UN One Planet Network with public authorities from around the world on how to leverage public procurement to positively impact the food value chain, to ultimately contribute to sustainable food systems.
- The CityLoops team of Metabolism of Cities has developed Circularity Assessment Methods for the cities to evaluate the circularity of their construction and/or biomass sectors.The reports provide contextual information on the sectors under study. They then illustrate how circular these sectors are through circularity indicators and a Sankey diagram. Finally, the reports analyse and interpret the results, present the limitations of the data used and offer recommendations on how to make these sectors more circular.
- The SCALIBUR project has published manuals for stakeholder engagement in the Urban Bio-waste value chain. The manuals offer a step-by-step guide on how to set up and run long-term multi-stakeholder engagements in order to enhance the acceptance and adoption of newly developed technologies and processes. They can be downloaded here.
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Does your city/region want to sign the Declaration? Do you want to share some news, resources or events with us? Or do you want your city or region to have the spotlight in our next newsletter?
Send us an email at info@circularcitiesdeclaration.eu
More information on how to become a signatory can also be found here
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