Closing the loop for urban material flows

Project Information

CityLoops

Grant agreement ID: 821033

DOI

10.3030/821033

Project closed

EC signature date 3 May 2019

Start date 1 October 2019

End date 30 September 2023

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Climate action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials

Total cost

€ 10 434 141,35

EU contribution

€ 9 989 576,97

Coordinated by

ICLEI EUROPEAN SECRETARIAT GMBH (ICLEI EUROPASEKRETARIAT GMBH)
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - CityLoops (Closing the loop for urban material flows)

Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2023-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The goal of CityLoops has been to support small and medium sized city administrations across Europe in promoting the transition to a circular economy, for two specific material streams: construction and demolition waste (CDW, including soil), and bio-waste - representing the two most significant material fractions in terms of environmental impact, overall volume, and economic significance. The project has demonstrated a variety of different approaches which local governments can take through a series of pilot actions within seven European cities: Apeldoorn (NL), Bodø (NO), Høje-Taastrup & Roskilde (DK), Mikkeli (FI), Porto (PT) and Seville (ES), for which a number of new tools, procedures and other instruments were developed and tested.

On CDW, actions ranged from developing new procedures and tools for carrying out pre-demolition audits, scans and material tracking, establishing material passports and secondary material marketplaces, to including reused materials and other circular aspects within new construction projects. For bio-waste an even wider range of activities were demonstrated, from efforts to reduce food waste in the tourism and social economy sectors, to developing and testing products made from collected bio-waste, establishing a green space certification system, or implementing new separated collection systems and routes.

To frame these actions within cities wider circular economy efforts, these pilots were accompanied by:
- The development and testing of tools for assessing a city’s circularity - the urban circularity assessment (UCA), and sector-wide circularity assessment (SCA)
- Actions to promote the use of procurement to support circular economy measures
- The development of stakeholder engagement structures to ensure relevant stakeholders are directly engaged in pilot activities, and promote longer term collaboration

The final aim is for the approaches taken in the project to be replicated by, or act as inspiration for other cities across Europe of any size or location. To this end, a group of seven replication zones have closely accompanied the project actions, and completed replication plans.

Ultimately, the project has demonstrated that local governments can (and must) act as central agents of change in the transition to a circular economy. The wide variety of measures demonstrated across the pilots, reflects the variety of levers local governments have for promoting this change - from direct interventions, such as public construction works, waste collection infrastructure, or catering procurement, to indirect measures promoting engagement amongst other stakeholders, such as citizen participation platforms, entrepreneurial contests, or awareness raising campaigns. The project also clearly demonstrated that direct cut and paste replication is rarely viable, but that spreading approaches to other regions of Europe is a detailed and lengthy process in which a number of factors are key, including broad dialogue within the “replicator” administrations, and with relevant local stakeholders, access to in-depth information on the approach to implementation followed and challenges faced, direct exchange with peers in the inspirational pilot cases.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Over the course of the project, 31 demonstration actions have been successfully carried out in the seven project cities - 17 focused on CDW and 14 on bio-waste. To support and facilitate these actions, 34 separate instruments (tools, procedures, platforms) were developed - 24 for CDW and 10 for bio-waste.

In terms of legacy outputs, the project has successfully developed a package of guidance materials aimed at helping other local governments of all sizes across Europe in implementing measures aimed at facilitating the circular transition, based on the experiences and lessons learned from the pilot projects. For each material stream an overarching guide for local and regional governments on how to promote circularity has been produced, accompanied by a series of replication packages and instruments designed to support this process. This guidance is underpinned by detailed documentation of the implementation of the demonstration actions, including an evaluation of the results achieved. At the cross-cutting level, methods and accompanying "how to" guides have been developed on carrying out the urban circularity assessment (UCA), sector-wide circularity assessment (SCA) and circular hotspot analysis (CHA), with detailed reports from each of the cities underpinning this guidance. A guide for implementing circular procurement, with accompanying toolkit has also been developed with documented analyses of each of the cities. For monitoring circularity impact at the city level, a circular city indicator set and monitoring framework has been produced and validated within the project. A set of European and national policy recommendations has also been produced following consultation within the consortium and with external partners, designed to clarify some of the main challenges facing local circularity implementation, and provide a direction of travel for policy measures to create an enabling framework.

Dissemination activities have focused on the guidance produced, and have targeted outreach to European local authorities - this has included the organisation of dedicated events, the participation in externally organised events, the publication of articles and press releases, promotion through newsletters, mailing lists, and via a number of websites and online platforms. As the guidance materials were finalised just before the end of the project, during the summer, active promotion will continue by the consortium throughout 2024.

The project has also resulted in lasting impacts within both the demonstration cities and the replication zones. Each demonstration city has prepared upscaling plans, in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, outlining plans to continue and upscale many of the pilot actions, as well as further areas of focus. The replication zones, have also prepared replication plans, indicating how they plan to develop their own circular actions inspired by the lessons learned from the CityLoops pilots.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

CityLoops has aspired from the outset to make four types of impact: scientific, economic, societal, and environmental. An examination of the outcomes shows that CityLoops has been quite successful in fulfilling its general project-level aspirations. Collectively, the achievements recorded cover all of the key expected impacts defined.

Scientifically, methodologies and indicators have been developed for circularity assessment and monitoring; handbooks and guidelines have been created for circular procurement and waste management; and IT-based tools have been developed to support circular decision-making. Economically, CityLoops has contributed to job creation in several cities and played a role in the development of infrastructure such as material depots and waste collection facilities. On societal impacts, all of the demonstration cities have carried out outreach and stakeholder engagement activities to raise awareness of CE among citizens or other stakeholders.Environmentally many of the cities have implemented demonstration actions that involve a documented increase in waste recycling and valorisation and a reduction in carbon emissions compared with traditional municipal practices. All these impacts are presented in detail in an Evaluation Report on the project.

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