The Circular Economy Partnership’s Draft Action Plan

The Circular Economy Partnership is working on developing an Action Plan with concrete actions to realize a city where residents and entrepreneurs do not think in terms of waste, but in terms of resources with permanent economic and social value.

The Circular Economy Partnership consists of six urban authorities, namely the City of Oslo, The Hague, Prato, Porto, Kaunas and Flanders region. The Member States are Finland, Poland, Slovenia and Greece. The European Commission (DG REGIO, DG ENV, DG CLIMA, DG RTD, DG GROW), the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), EUROCITIES, URBACT, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Association of Cities and Regions for sustainable Resource management (ACR+) are also partners.

Cities play an essential role in the development of the circular economy. They act as enablers of potential measures that can influence both businesses and citizens. Governance, enabling businesses, public procurement, consumption, and resource management are the themes that would all have a bearing upon the development of circular economy concepts within cities.

Therefore, the Partnership has, based on the expertise and knowledge obtained throughout its work, identified several actions and recommendations to be put forward to the EU, Member States and cities. The Partnership has reviewed the whole circle, starting with the extraction of raw material, design, production, transportation, consumption and finally the waste recycling with residues for final disposal. The following themes have been selected: a) Circular consumption; b) Urban resource management; c) Circular business enablers and drivers; d) Governance. Actions presented in this document all cover one or more of the above relevant themes.

To summarise, these actions and recommendations touch upon some of the most important barriers and also provide advice for cities in their work towards a strategy for circular economy.

The full draft can be downloaded here: https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/system/files/ged/ua_ce_draft_action_plan_-_final_09.02.2018.pdf