by Walther Ploos van Amstel
As appointed in the EU Circular Economy Action Plan, cities and regions in EU member countries start accompanying their circular economy strategies by monitoring frameworks, often called Circular Economy Monitors (CEM). Having the task to assess the performance towards the achievement of set targets and steer decision-making, CEMs need to rely on many statistics and datasets. Waste …
European cities face unprecedented challenges, from climate change to biodiversity loss, growing economic instability, and global chain disruptions. The circular economy is increasingly recognized as an excellent opportunity to tackle these challenges, unlocking wide-ranging benefits that help cities thrive and become more liveable and resilient. This is precisely why the Circular Cities Declaration (CCD) has …
We are living on a finite planet. Mankind is overstepping planetary boundaries, however. In 2021, worldwide consumption exceeded the yearly bio-capacity of the Earth (what we call the overshoot day) on the 29th of July. The situation is far worse for industrialized countries: In 2022, Belgium reached that overshoot day on the 26th of March. …
Circular construction materials have been reused or recycled to reduce waste and promote sustainability. However, while using circular materials in construction has many benefits, logistical challenges must be addressed. Some of the critical logistics challenges with circular construction materials include: Sourcing: Finding a reliable and consistent supply of circular materials can be challenging. It requires …
Little progress has been made in recent years toward achieving a fully circular economy by 2050 and halving abiotic resource use (abiotic means non-living and is used to refer to the part of habitat or ecosystems that is not living) by 2030. The use of most resources did not decrease. Only fossil fuel use decreased, …
Efficient electronic waste (e-waste) management is one of the strategies to save materials, critical minerals, and precious metals with limited global reserves. The e-waste collection issue has gained attention in recent years due to low collection rates of e-waste. Shevchenko et al. (2021) aim to search for solutions in the e-waste collection sphere with close-to-zero transport and …
Circular economy business models (CEBMs) are identified as essential levers in the transition to a circular economy (CE). In recent years, a growing body of research has examined the barriers and enablers to these models; however, the available empirical evidence still needs to be improved while sector-specific assessments are lacking. A recent study aims to enrich the …
The European Commission aims for a full circular economy (CE), which will reuse all resources in 2050. Implementing circular urban supply chains is a major economic transformation that can only work if significant coordination problems between the actors involved are solved. This requires, on the one hand, the implementation of efficient urban collection technologies, where process …
Recycling activities are complex and involve many actors. Recycling supply chains are under increasing pressure due to higher volumes of waste and rising requirements regarding the treatment and quality of the secondary raw materials. The global generation of municipal solid waste is estimated to be two billion tons per year.