ICLEI Circulars accompanies local and regional governments along their circular development journey, regardless of their starting point.
CIRCULAR BIOCARBON presents a first-of-a-kind flagship biorefinery designed to valorise the organic fraction of municipal solid waste and sewage sludge into high added-value products. The biorefinery will turn urban waste streams generated in cities into products for industries and end-consumers, including coating of products and mechanical moving parts, compostable waste bags, solid fertiliser and liquid biobased biostimulant.
ICLEI Oceania and South East Asia secretariat will be working with project lead Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) to bridge Australian SOLAR PV recycling technical advisory and project management knowhow across a pilot of cities and municipalities in the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. Projects will work with city administration and local industry to establish solar PV recycling networks.
The overarching aim of CirCoFin is to create urban circularity markets for the construction sector, which are driven by cities and regions as project promoters. To this end, the project delivers a portfolio of sustainable innovative financial, technical and business development solutions supporting these markets. Four cities and regions (Greater Copenhagen, Lisbon, Munich and the Scottish Central Lowlands) have teamed up in this project to start influencing local and regional urban construction markets towards more circularity in the overall process.
Involving 26 partners to improve food security and urban sustainability in over 65 cities in Africa (Mbale, Uganda, Kisumu, Kenya, Tunis, Tunisia, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Cape Town, South Africa) and Europe, AfriFOODlinks promotes healthy diets, transforms urban food systems, supports women and youth in agri-food businesses, and strengthens inclusive governance. ICLEI Circulars engages in the project through its Circularity & Inclusivity Business program, which supports up to 15 local food companies in adopting circular and socially inclusive practices.
The Community of Practice serves as a capacity-building and peer-learning cohort for 15 cities and regions across East Asia and the Asia-Pacific. These cities are committed to achieving climate neutrality and advancing innovation and smart city strategies for sustainable transformation by 2050. The Community of Practice is designed to build a powerful cohort of leading cities, towns, provinces, and subnational states that will actively collaborate over two years, from March 2025 to December 2026.
SIRCULAR aims to create digital tools, technological solutions, and non-technical services for the decarbonisation of the built environment, as well as a ready-to-use methodology to assess the circularity of buildings. SIRCULAR will engage the entire supply chain involved in all phases of a building’s life cycle to increase circularity and sustainability in four national clusters: Estonia (Tallinn), Spain (Barcelona), Germany (Karlsruhe), and Greece (Athens).
SPADES focuses on securing soils in spatial planning and developments, as part of the Mission A Soil Deal for Europe. Researchers are tackling this in seventeen locations in ten countries in Europe: Sweden (Göteborgs Stad); France (Ville de Grenoble, Nantes Métropole, Montpellier, Pays Cœur d’Hérault), Slovenia (City of Ljubljana), Germany (Leipzig, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), Austria (Klagenfurt), Netherlands (Ooststellingwerf, Groene Hart), Belgium (Flanders, Grenzeloos Bocageland), Italy (Lombardy), Romania (Transylvania), Hungary (Hajdú-Bihar County).
Cohesion for Transition (C4T) engages national, regional, and local cohesion and sustainability transitions practitioners in sharing experience and good practices, creating partnerships and jointly identifying solutions. It also provides technical assistance to facilitate the development and/or implementation of sustainability transitions. C4T covers all EU regions across Europe.
SYMBA aims to develop an innovative Industrial-Symbiosis method for bio-based industrial ecosystems, which will be replicated across 5 European countries (IT, ES, BE, NL, DE) and adapted to the respective local and regional conditions. By engaging various industrial sectors, SYMBA will demonstrate the transition from a linear to a circular economy and significantly contribute to delivering bio-based solutions with reduced environmental impacts on soil, water, and air quality.
Redol will foster industrial-urban symbiosis, transforming cities into hubs for circularity. Over four years of activity, it will redesign five value chains for solid urban waste (packaging, plastics, construction and demolition waste, textiles, and waste from electrical and electronic equipment) to produce 12 circular products. Redol will support the transition of Zaragoza towards a zero-residues city by 2040, contributing to saving over 14B€ and 280 ktCO2 per year.
SYMSITES aims at developing new technologies and solutions based on Industrial and Urban symbiosis for local and regional collaborations among diverse actors and sectors, to improve the sustainability of the use of industrial and societal resources starting from wastewater and waste materials. SYMSITES will test novel technologies, methodologies, and stakeholders engagement applied in four European EcoSites, from the north (Bornholm, Denmark), through the mid- (Tullnerfeld, Austria), and southward to (Alicante, Spain and West Achia, Greece).
P2GreeN aims to foster a paradigm shift, from a linear phosphorous and nitrogen nutrient system within the agri-food supply chain, to a circular nutrient flow between urban and rural areas. Solutions will be trialed in three pilot regions on a north-south trajectory from the Baltic Sea region, to the metropolitan area of Hamburg-Hannover and finally the region of Axarquia in Southern Spain. Four follower regions will demonstrate replication in Hungary, Italy, France and Greece.
The Hubs4Circularity (H4C) are intended to achieve a systemic change in circular utilisation of resources and GHG emission reductions within given geographic areas. Working closely with its sister project H4C-Europe, the H4C ECoP consortium is confident of delivering an industrial-urban symbiosis community of practice and knowledge platform that will achieve the target of greater circularity and carbon neutrality through profitable actions that also benefit communities/civil society.
BIOMODEL4REGIONS aims to support the establishment of innovative bioeconomy governance models at local/regional level to achieve better-informed decision-making processes, social engagement and innovation. The project is implemented in 6 pilot regions (Normandy in France, Delta region in Southwest Netherlands, Slovakia, Sweden, Western Macedonia, Tuscany and whole Italy).
CircularInvest will provide project development assistance to selected circular economy project promoters from across Europe with the aim of developing significant projects at the local and regional scales, and close investments for an overall volume of more than €20 million. The project is currently assisting promoters in Sweden, Slovenia, Spain, UK, Portugal, France, Germany, Romania and Norway.
Falling under the SOURCE programme, WaterSOURCE focuses on advancing water circularity across South African municipalities. While the knowledge sharing and the toolkits are country-wide, the implementation component will take place in the Gauteng City Region as a targeted pilot that addresses non-revenue water loss through rapid response led by community engagement and SME deployment.
The Campus: A One Hectare Circular Farm & Learning Hub is an urban demonstration project which showcases the application of circular economy approaches to urban farming in Cape Town, South Africa. Designed as an experimental initiative, the circular farm is being developed into a scalable, business-ready model that could be adopted by a variety of stakeholders in different sectors and at different levels of government. It also serves as a practical learning platform, engaging stakeholders in hands-on learning about circular economy, the environment and their role in shaping sustainable communities.
The project aims to promote the concept of circular economy in the textile and garment sector of Ethopia, Lesotho, Madagascar and South Africa through value chain approach that addresses the sector’s upstream through resource use, and green and sustainable chemistry, as well as the downstream through reuse, recycling and conversion of textile/garment discards and related wastes into economically viable and socially beneficial products and services.
LUPPA, resulting from a partnership between ICLEI South America and Comida do Amanhã Institute, is a collaborative platform aimed at city officials and civil society representatives in Brazilian cities that wish to strengthen healthy and resilient food systems. Local governments are brought together in workshops, roundtables, challenges and immersive dialogues to exchange experiences on the challenges faced when structuring public policies on healthy and sustainable food systems.
The project assists local governments in implementing green procurement and promoting the consumption and production of green products. To enhance the implementation of green public procurement, local governments receive support through three activities: Network, Policy Workshop and Capacity-building. The number of local governments participating in the project has grown to 12 metropolitan (in 2024) and provincial governments, from 3 in 2019.
The Circular Cities Declaration is designed to help accelerate the transition from a linear to a circular economy in Europe, and thereby create a resource-efficient, low-carbon and socially responsible society. The Declaration has been developed by a broad partnership of stakeholders to ensure that the vision and commitments contained are ambitious, yet achievable, and reflect the needs of all.
The Twinning Programme is a peer exchange initiative: it matches cities and regions working on circular economy transitions, pairing them to share experience, explore solutions, and strengthen local strategies through collaboration. Each pairing is based on thematic alignment and a similar level of experience. The programme is open to local and regional authorities, public agencies, and publicly owned companies in EU Member States and Horizon Europe Associated Countries.
The Circular City Centre (C3) is a competence and resource centre at the European Investment Bank in the framework of the Circular Cities and Regions Initiative. C3 supports EU cities in their circular economy transition by offering guidance documents and tools, webinars and workshops. It also provides two advisory programmes that help cities advance towards impactful circular projects ready for financing and implementation.