CircularPSP Final Event – Solutions for wide-scale take up of Circular Economy Action in Cities

Many Circular Economy (CE) solutions are facing the valley of death due to a lack of uptake by public and private actors. Despite thousands of innovative CE-solutions documented across hundreds of repositories, global circularity declined to 6.9% and the EU stands at half of 2030 target of 24%.

To develop a local CE, cities need a tool to create a place-based mission and identify the most impactful projects. CE-action needs to become more accessible, simpler and rewarding for the average public worker. Eight cities co-developed two competing solutions reducing complexity with step-by-step guidance for advanced R-strategies and providing procurement departments with means to improve tender documents. After real-life testing in 22 organisations, the solutions are ready for uptake. CircOS and CircularAI are built to grow circularity and sustainable jobs through simplified uptake of CE solutions hereby overcoming the dual valleys of local and economic for CE in Europe.

We will present the concept, solutions and options for their funding as well as general insights on CE practice in cities. The outcomes are results of eight leading CE-cities collaborating across Europe to increase the number of CE-practitioners in their and neighbouring cities as part of the Horizon Europe PCP CircularPSP (LinkedIn, grant: 101092208).

Agenda

Concept and results (30 min)

• How and why scale CE-action within and across cities to all staff? (Georg Vogt)
• Results from 22 test organisations (Emanuela Vancore)
• Testimonials from Berlin representing four test organisations (Dina Padalkina)

Pitches of two competing solutions CircOS (Kim Turk Mehes) & CircularAI (Emrah Alkaya) (15 min)

• Key functionalities: AI, step-by-step guidance, procurement support etc.
• Availability, public procurement readiness, conditions and market uptake plans

Uptake guidance for procurers (Georg Vogt) (15 min)

• Procurement, funding and implementation considerations
• Practical resources for wider use: data sources and AI risk assessment
• Policy paper on opportunities and barriers for uptake

This is an official World Circular Economy Forum Side Event

Additional Material:

• IEEE paper on CircularPSP and original CircularPSP Challenge Brief
• Solutions: CircOS and CircularAI
• To follow at event: policy paper, site descriptions and evaluation, procurer guidance and AI Act compliant risk assessments.