Circular Glasgow
Glasgow’s vision is to become one of the world’s first circular cities. In 2015, it took its first steps towards creating a stronger more sustainable economy by pioneering a complete Cir...
Maribor, a Circular City
Maribor is the second largest city in Slovenia and home to approximately 110,000 inhabitants. Although it is not Slovenia’s capital city, it is the regions circular economy capital. In June 2...
Why is Portland a Resilient City?
Portland, Oregon (with a metropolitan area population of 2.3 million people) regularly tops the lists of “most sustainable cities” in the United States. For decades, Portland has been a ...
Tai-Pay-As-You-Throw to Lower Waste Production
Walking around Taipei, Taiwan, one seldom sees trash or even trash cans. Instead you might see people washing plastic bottles, carefully sorting computer parts and families waiting for the nightly g...
100 Resilient Cities
How can we implement a real circular economy without having cities geared for resilience against stress and shocks? This is a key area of reflection when discussing the future of cities and in parti...
We Are Resilience
What are you doing at the moment as a resilience facility? “Today we are mapping the city’s current and future risks, both in terms of shock and stress. Those classifiable as stress eve...
The Blue Revolution Playground
“To have a real impact and solve the most pressing problems, we need entrepreneurs.” This is the mantra that has been repeated for years by Siemen Cox and Wouter Veer – the creator...
Ireland is Ever Greener Thanks to the Bioeconomy
Green is the Irish colour. Historical, cultural, geographical and even religious reasons underpin this inseparable pairing. Today, green is also the banner of Ireland’s environmental aspiratio...
Slovenia Aims to Become a Circular Hub for Europe
A circular transition. Slovenia launched this campaign during the Third Circular Challenge Conference held on the 10th and 11th May 2018 in Kostanjevica na Kriki and Maribor, and endorsed by Circula...
Development Agencies in the Circular Economy
In many industrialised countries recycling is part of the daily routine and waste treatment is not a major problem. At least not at first sight. However, this is not the case in all parts of the wor...
All the Secrets of Cork, Circular by Nature
Forty million cells and only 0.16 grams per cubic centimetre. Around 90% air. These are some of the characteristics that make every single piece of cork unique. A naturally derived material that has...
A Heritage Worth Preserving
Looking at any map of the geographical distribution of cork oak (Quercus Suber L.), what immediately catches the eye is the precise area in which it has spread over time: the Mediterranean basin. Th...
An (Almost) Perfect Circle: Paper Recycling in Italy
Making a virtue of necessity. This has always been the mantra in the Italian paper industry. A Country of “poor” forests that are not particularly productive in terms of biomass, the Ita...
Ecodesign for Aluminium
Thinking circular. It sounds easy but, when dealing with industrial processes, the approach of having a common thread linking products from the cradle to the grave, and considering end-of-life recyc...
What If Karl Polanyi Was Right?
With this sentence, Karl Polanyi outlines the idea that, as of the early 1900s, society was forced to conform to the needs of the market mechanism instead of choosing the more logical approach of ec...
Re-designing the Future
According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation “A circular economy is one that is restorative and regenerative by design.” The big challenge for innovators and pioneers is to desi...
Waste + Information = Resource
Circular economy principles rely on a very simple equation, “waste = resource.” However, the reality is somewhat different. For example, converting plastic waste into valuable material i...
For a Circular Europe
After years of delays, the European Parliament in Strasbourg has approved the Circular Economy (CE) Package. However, things have not yet come full circle. “The way for a new develop...
An Important Step Forward
Janez Potocnik – Forum for the Future of Agriculture, Brussels 2016 Adopted by the European Parliament on April 18th 2018 and approved by the European Council on...
The American Way
What is the difference in the way Brussels and Washington D.C. see the circular economy? To get an answer one should have attended the Fourth Circular Economy Summit, organised by the powerful US Ch...