Municipality-led circular economy case studies from EIT Climate-KIC and partners

How can cities achieve continued prosperity whilst preserving and reducing their demands on natural resources, like building and construction materials, food and energy, that are fuelling economic growth and global warming?

City municipalities across the world are looking at the circular economy approach as a potential strategy for the transition to low-carbon cities with sustainable consumption. Cities echo that it is time to accelerate the shift to ‘Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Rethink.’

Cities hold the promise of reconciling these seemingly opposing objectives and are ready to include circular economy as a planning tool to replace current practices by adopting a circular, restorative approach, where we no longer consider anything to be ‘waste’.

The EIT Climate-KIC Orchestrated Innovation Ecosystem program is specifically looking for initiatives that help with the sharing of circular economy innovation between cities, regions and networks on a global basis, which is the essence of this Circular Cities project.

The Circular Cities project overall is investigating how city governments can be transformational change agents and creators of smart and sustainable neighbourhoods. The results are anticipated to improve how cities manage building, construction and utility waste and, through productively utilizing household and industrial waste streams, will increase the growing perception that what was once viewed as waste can now be viewed as resource streams.

This publication is a case study catalogue showing how cities are achieving this transformation, which cities across the globe can use as best practise in their own localities.