Circle Economy Foundationnews
Published on: 
February 9, 2024

From parliament to shopping centres: the ten+ places Circle Economy has made impact

Circle Economy is excited to announce the launch of the Impact Report 2022. Following a year of circular analysis for businesses, cities and nations, we focused our attention inwards to assess our impacts across three key actions: analyse, act and scale. Looking back at 2022, we are delighted to witness the circular economy increasingly gaining a place on policymakers’ agendas worldwide. Below are some of the most inspiring examples of how we’ve put circularity into action. 

In 2022, we have empowered seven businesses, 11 cities and 11 nations across four continents to become more circular. This contributes to the total of 120 businesses, 51 cities and 23 nations across six continents that we’ve aided over the past ten years. We’ve also trained more than 2,700 people across 350 organisations in circular principles over the past decade. 

Zooming in on the practical outcomes of our work, we’ve supplied multiple businesses, cities and nations with the data-driven insights instrumental for their circular transitions. Thanks to the Circularity Gap Report Sweden, for example, Swedish stakeholders have discovered significant gaps in the country’s audacious net zero 2045 plan. 

‘The Circularity Gap Report Sweden came as a significant enrichment but also as a surprise. Though in the past we have placed a lot of emphasis on recycling and lowering Sweden's carbon footprint, we realised there is still a lot to be done in terms of circularity’, said Carl Jensen, Project Manager at RISE, a Swedish research institute. 

In Northern Ireland, the regional Department for the Economy (DfE) used our Circularity Gap Report Northern Ireland to inform future circular policy development and reported about this to the UK parliament. 

In the meantime, our business team has empowered international retail chain Action to open its very first Circular Product Specialist position. Since 2020, we’ve conducted ‘circle scans’ for the retailer’s 13 product lines—from gardening and home goods to technology—and have trained more than 25 stakeholders, enabling Action to make more sustainable decisions when determining the items that will crop up on its shelves. 

Later in the year, we partnered with Fasion for Good for the collaborative Sorting for Circularity Europe initiative, which produced a global database of 100+ textile recyclers to stimulate a recycling market for unwanted textiles. This will help textile sorters to find suitable recyclers and prevent tonnes of materials from going to waste every year. 

A number of powerful collaborations went live and bore their first fruits this year. As a culmination of work with an International Financial Institution (IFI) exchange network, we published the Circular Finance Roadmap to unleash the power of IFIs to fund the circular transition. In 2022, we also became an accredited organisation under the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and developed joint initiatives with Chatham House, the World Bank and the International Labour Organization (ILO)

Last but not least, our digital team launched landmark initiatives, catalysing our 11 years of research and development of circular solutions and putting them into the service of the global online community. A beta version of the GANBATTE online platform went live—currently focusing on cities but with more to come soon.

‘To date, the open-access ganbatte.world platform has been visited by over 1,100 unique cities around the world, and more than 20 cities have reached out to take next steps in just a matter of weeks. The platform currently contains data for 6,000 cities around the world with baseline data, case studies and tools—and this is only the beginning,’ says Ivonne Bojoh, COO & Director Digital at Circle Economy.

And, at the Web Summit Lisbon 2022, we unveiled Circularity Academy, a gamified e-learning platform meant to assess, engage and inspire people, with the aim of getting them involved in the circular transition. ‘This year, we have delivered a circular economy learning track to a top management consulting firm, to train over 1,000 consultants,’ adds Ivonne Bojoh.

These are only a few highlights from the Impact Report 2022. Download the full report to read about more good news for circularity around the globe. 

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