News from our Members
Built Environment
How a city is built can have a massive impact on environment and climate change effects. The topic of built environment is key in the framework of a circular transition. Adopting circular solutions and strategies on built environment can produce benefits in terms of reduction of GHGs emissions, land use, energy consumption and even on the level of happiness of citizens.
This topic within the ACR+ Thematic area is strictly related to sectors such as urban planning and design, architecture, referring to buildings, public spaces and infrastructures, and, in general, construction and demolition value chains. Public authorities can play a key role in promoting and supporting circularity in the built environment by implementing policies and actions that:
- Make secondary materials competitively priced through green taxes
- Promote standardisation of secondary raw materials at national level
- Facilitate selective demolition, renovation, retrofitting, and materials’ reuse
- Support research on and implementation of circular construction solutions (such as Nature Based Solutions)
Work in progress
ACR+ is currently working on this area through:
- Inertwaste: an Interreg Europe project that aims to valorise inert waste from industrial and construction processes and extend their life cycle. The project is based on the exchange of European regional experiences and the discussion of ideas for resolving current policy challenges. ACR+ is involved in the project as a partner under the lead of its member the Navarre region.
Have a look at
Interested in the topic? You can have a look at the following resources:
- Pilot Actions of the ProCirc project: a project that demonstrates circular procurement opportunities in the construction sector, with a focus on different types of buildings such as temporary structures, reused office buildings, social housing, public administration office buildings.
- Sustainable construction guidelines for public authorities: a document that provides guidance on how to encourage circularity and material resources efficiency in the construction sector. The guidelines focus on circularity instead of covering only energy efficiency extensively, and go beyond waste to integrate the whole value chain of the construction sector.
Relevant projects and initiatives
If you want to get involved with our work on the Thematic Area or you have any questions please contact Serena Lisai (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).
Circular Lifestyles
This Thematic Area is about connecting the dots of circularity on your territory by making citizens, consumers, and producers care and be involved to boost a local sustainable consumption and production. From supporting stakeholders to instigate new models based on maximising the potential of resources and designing out of waste to using a wide array of drivers such as tourism, sport and cultural events to steer a green transition, this thematic area encompasses a wide diversity of initiatives and projects. Define your role as a game changer to speed up the transition while maintaining a holistic approach balancing economic competitiveness, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion.
Initiatives and projects that contribute to this area and portfolio want to examine behaviour, assess consumption patterns and challenge the status quo and provoke behavioural change. A cross-sectoral cooperation is needed in order to allow them to do so.
Work in progress
ACR+ latest involvement was in capacity building activities among SMEs in the sector. Similar baseline scenario and behaviour assessment as well as complex screening and mapping exercises were carried out in the field of sports and event management in general. ACR+ is now combining all the acquired intelligence and its expertise to help public authorities tapping into this area to reinforce the implementation of their strategies among the less-obvious industries and occurrences on their territories.project is based on the exchange of European regional experiences and the discussion of ideas for resolving current policy challenges. ACR+ is involved in the project as a partner under the lead of its member the Navarre region.
Have a look at
Interested in the topic? You can have a look at the following resources:
- Guidelines for City Managers and Policy Makers to Mainstream Urban Strategies for Waste Management in Tourist Cities
- Improved Environmental management Pilot Test Report - It reports on the implementation of pilot actions to improve the environmental management of sport events by a group of football stadiums across Europe, including training organisations and actors involved in the tests.
- Self-Assessment Tool for Sport Organisations - this tool offers recommendations to equip the sport sector to be an amplifier and an implementer for solid solutions to make a journey towards a greener delivery according to the needs and specificities of each of its members.
- EU Green Week partner event: “Greening sports for achieving participative and contributory circular communities: skills and know-how for getting there
Relevant projects and initiatives
If you want to get involved with our work on the Thematic Area or you have any questions please contact Ernest Kovács (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).
Waste & Materials Flows
This thematic area mostly focuses on the implementation of the waste hierarchy, also taking the larger perspective of material resource flows. To address the many challenges linked with material resource and waste management, it is important to understand what the best practices leading to high performances are. A better understanding of how different policies and local instruments impacts local performances can contribute to identify key recommendations, by conducting consistent comparisons and benchmarks. It is also important to connect these topics with more transversal topic such as climate change, to better identify key priorities.
Despite some progress made in the past 20 years, material resource and waste management is still underperforming in Europe. While the domestic material consumption decreased since the start of the millennium, also because of the economic crisis of 2008, it has remained quite stable for the past 10 years. There are still significant differences among and within Member State regarding the performances of waste management systems. It is unclear how much the prevention strategies and actions led in Europe for the past decades had an impact on waste generation, when they should be the priority of material resource strategies, considering that the benefits yielded from waste recycling on climate change hardly compensates the impact linked with the extraction of resources and the manufacturing of products.
Work in progress
ACR+ launched the European Waste Observatory in 2010, employing working groups to compare and cross-analyse local waste management data, with the aim of understanding variations and identifying best practices, subsequently leading to the adoption of its approach by various EU projects like Regions for Recycling in 2012 and COLLECTORS in 2017, all dedicated to enhancing data comparison and outlining essential guidelines for municipal waste management.
Have a look at
Interested in the topic? You can have a look at the following resources:
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Report: quantified actions to prevent food waste (September 2022)
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Report: Opportunities for municipalities in glass packaging collection (October 2021)
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Support of 7 ACR+ Members for the MCLC campaigns, 7 individual reports and 2 cross-analysis reports
Relevant projects and initiatives
If you want to get involved with our work on the Thematic Area or you have any questions please contact Jean-Benoît Bel (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).
Policy & Governance
This is ACR+ cross-cutting Thematic Area, given its interlinkages with all other themes. As the name suggests, there are two main pillars:
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- The first revolves around the various instruments that local and regional authorities have at their disposal to foster the circular economy. These tools encompass a wide array of competences, ranging from land use planning to waste management. We also promote soft measures, such as empowering local sustainable businesses and engaging with citizens to raise awareness on critical topics.
- The second refers to the different governance levels working together for better policy making. Thus, it refers to the work needed to empower local and regional authorities vis a vis national and EU level, matching their responsibilities with their resources already from the policy design stage.
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Work in progress
ACR+ is currently working on this area through:
- The EPR Club where ACR+ is connecting the EU level policy makers and local authorities to explore relevant issues, peer learning opportunities for better policy and participating to numerous projects that developed policy recommendations pertinent for local, regional as well as EU level policy makers.
- As part of our services, we review regional waste management plans for interested members (Brussels, Dublin as an example).
- Our benchmarking and technical studies are about common challenges that policy makers have to face in different fields (e.g textiles, waste collection, pay-as-you-throw) and they aim to support LRAs in better policy making.
- ACR+ is also monitoring EU level developments and prepares accessible short pieces of information through its EU Digest on a regular basis.
Have a look at
Interested in the topic? You can have a look at the following resources:
- Recordings and proceedings of the webinars and events hosted by the EPR Club
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The report Deposit-refund systems for one-way beverage packaging: an overview of 10 systems in Europe
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The report The governance of circular bioeconomy - Practices and lessons learnt from European regions
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The ProCirc support documents to embed circularity along the procurement process: the Procurement transformation canvas and workshop manual and the Circular Procurement Transformation Guidance
Relevant projects and initiatives
If you want to get involved with our work on the Thematic Area or you have any questions please contact Tugce Tugran (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).