Circle Scan

BY JORDI PASCUAL

How cities can use data evidence to inform their innovation process and the circular economy.

Circle Economy is an impact organization dedicated to the practical and scalable implementation of the circular economy. Our mission is to deliver practical and scalable circular economy solutions to businesses, cities, and nations but also provide insights and research to the wider public across all these different agents. Our vision is to contribute to a prosperous world with finite resources by accelerating the transition toward the circular economy.

What Is the Circular Economy?

We are trying to transition from the linear economy, where we waste most of the sources that we extract, manufacture, and consume, toward a circular economy where we capture the value of resources without generating any waste.

The reality is that our world is only 8.6% circular, and the trend is going down. The linear economy is about this process of sourcing resources, refining them, producing, selling, using them, and disposing of them via incineration or landfilling. In a circular economy, resources are maintained at their highest utility. We value those resources for as long as possible by closing the loops, keeping products in the use phase, reusing them, refurbishing them, and, as a last option, recycling them.

At Circle Economy, we have the seven key elements framework, which summarizes all the different strategies that compose the circular economy: regenerative resources, preserving and extending what’s already made, reusing or using waste as a resource. Those are the core elements. But we also have the enabling elements such as design, rethinking the business models, collaboration, and incorporation of digital technologies.

Half of the global population lives in urban areas, two-thirds of global energy is used in cities, 80% of global GDP is generated in cities, and 75% of global resources are used in cities. We see the potential of circular cities for value creation, job creation, better air quality, competitiveness in global markets, and reduction of CO2 emissions and resource use. We see circular cities as the drivers for resilience in our society, and the circular economy is a key lever in bridging the emissions gap to a 1.5° pathway.

Circle City Scans

The Circle City Scan is an action-oriented approach to help build road maps for circular economy projects. We use analytical tools and assessments to translate the complexity of data and resource flows into understandable insights that can provide information for cities to make decisions. Then we identify the key impact areas are and where the opportunities might be to overcome those impacts. We like to call it a multi-stakeholder approach. We bring together local changemakers and stakeholders from businesses, academia, the public sector, research institutes, and civil society so that they own the process. Our Circle City Scan approach has four main phases:

Socioeconomic Analysis: We engage with a group of key stakeholders and develop a baseline analysis of the current state of the circular economy.

Material Flow Analysis: We try to build an evidence-based analysis to identify the main challenges in the different sectors.

Circular Strategies: We try to develop actionable circular strategies and define scalable pilot projects to test if those strategies can work on a city level.

Action Plan: We develop the pilot projects’ action plans. What actions need to be taken, by whom, what’s the type of investment, what’s the financial investment needed, and what steps need to be taken?

Jordi Pascual

City Strategist, Circle Economy

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Jordi Pascual is driven by systemic transformation and creating a new economic model that delivers prosperity within the boundaries of our planet. In his role as a strategist in Circle Economy’s cities team, he works with cities to analyze their socioeconomic system, scope their opportunities, and realize innovative, practical, and impactful circular economy strategies.

Circular London

In our recent Circle City Scan of London, we linked the circular economy to consumptionbased emissions. We called it a Carbon Scan because it tried to link carbon to resources and climate change. London has set the target to become a zero-carbon city by 2030 and is tackling consumption-based emissions.

First, we did some baseline assessment and analysis to understand the sector, and we then mapped the resources flows and the supply chain and how those link to emissions and carbon impacts. We found that 15.5 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions are being emitted via London’s food system—the same as the energy use of about 1.8 million houses for a year. About 78% of greenhouse gas emissions of London’s food system occur outside of London. And more than 1 million tons is the total food loss and waste before reaching households.

We looked at how the circular economy could help in reducing consumptionbased emissions and improving resource management. We found three key intervention points: 1) Reducing meat consumption by 20% can decrease food-related consumptionbased emissions by 20%; 2) Reducing food loss and waste by 50% can decrease emissions by 10%; and 3) making better use of waste can decrease emissions by an additional 0.4%.