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European Circular Cities Declaration introduced at webinar

15 December 2020

The first European Circular Cities Declaration Webinar was organised on 7 December. During the webinar, the Declaration was introduced to cities and regions potentially interested in signing. They were inspired by current signatories who presented good practice examples of how they integrated circularity principles into their city. The European Circular Cities Declaration was developed by a broad partnership of European stakeholders, who also had the chance to introduce themselves in the webinar.

Valerio Barberis, the Deputy Mayor of Prato, explained how the city aims to transform itself into the first ‘urban jungle’ in the world, while Zala Strojin, Circular Economy Manager in Ljubljana, presented the Slovenian’s capital vision for becoming a ‘green city with convenient living standards’ by 2025.

The perspective of Northern Europe was presented by Liv Öberg, project manager for circular economy in Umeå (Sweden), who gave an overview of the challenges and opportunities facing the Swedish city as it transitions towards a circular economy. Kathrine Overgaard Warberg, head of the Circular Copenhagen programme, showed how her city is working to transform waste separation and collection. Finally, Oslo's Håkon Sandven Jafton, coordinator of the Urban Agenda Partnership on Circular Economy, gave an update on the progess of the Partnership.

Missed the webinar? The presentations of all the speakers, as well as the full recording of the webinar, can be viewed here. The next webinar is planned to happen during the first quarter of 2021.

Webinar to introduce European Circular Cities Declaration

2 December 2020

On 07.12.2020 the European Circular Cities Declaration will be presented in a webinar. The webinar will provide an introduction to the Declaration to cities and regions potentially interested in becoming signatories. Furthermore, it will present examples of good circular practices from the current group of signatories. To register, visit here.

The Circular Cities Declaration has been signed by over 30 European cities from 15 different countries. It is a commitment document from cities and regions to use the levers at their disposal coherently across the organisation to transition from a linear to a circular economy. More information can be found on the Circular Cities Declaration website


Webinar Programme


14.00 – 14.30 Introduction to the European Circular Cities Declaration (Simon Clement, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability)
     • Introduction to the Circular Cities Declaration and upcoming activities
     • Introduction to the Support Partners
     • Opportunity for questions


14.30 – 15.10 Circular Cities – best practice presentations
     • Ljubljana (Zala Strojin, Circular Economy Manager, City of Ljubljana)
     • Umeå (Liv Öberg, Project Manager Circular Economy, City of Umeå)
     • Prague, (Vojtech Vosecky, Chair, Circular Economy Steering Group, City of Prague)
     • Tbc


15.10 – 15.20 Urban Agenda Partnership on Circular Economy – Update (Håkon Sandven Jentoft, Coordinator Urban Agenda Partnership on Circular Economy, City of Oslo)


15.20 – 15.40 Discussion: Critical challenges for cities in the circular transition
      • Open discussion to identify the areas/topics where there is most interest in exchange between the signatories
      • Separate breakout group: Info session on the Circular Cities Declaration for interested cities and regions

15.40 – 15.45 Close

PlastiCircle hosts Virtual Study Tour of Alba Iulia pilot

16 October 2020

The PlastiCircle project conducted a Virtual Study Tour of the third and final pilot of the project, which is located in the Romanian city of Alba Iulia. The event took place online on 15 October, with 40 participants in attendance, including city authorities, waste managers, procurers, companies, and other plastic stakeholders.

Through the use of technology and satellite mapping, participants had the opportunity to virtually walk through the streets of Alba Iulia and see first-hand how the project is helping reduce plastic waste in the city.

Project coordinator César Aliaga kicked-off the event by reflecting on the problems associated with plastic in Europe and presenting an overview of the project. He mentioned that, currently, over 27 million tons of plastic are produced every year and only 31.1% of it is recycled, causing an economic impact of 11 billion EUR and an environmental impact which is equivalent to heating 1 million homes for 94 years.

There are a lot of opportunities [to change this] in the following years. That is why, in PlastiCircle, we are trying to develop several technologies in the areas of collection, to collect more material and with better quality; transport, to be more efficient in transporting the material from the cities to recipient plants; also sorting, to separate materials by the type of polymer; and finally, recycling to develop new products out of it,” he said.

With a Google Earth presentation, César took the participants on a virtual tour over the two first pilot cities of Valencia (Spain), Utrecht (The Netherlands), and introduced Alba Iulia (Romania) as the last pilot city.

Following this, Julián Torralba, from Las Naves, introduced the citizen and stakeholders engagement activities that took place in Valencia, from recognising the area and organising workshops with citizens and stakeholders, to the process of tailoring the communication strategy to fit the population demographics of the selected districts.

We noticed that the average age of the people was higher, so we couldn’t just rely on online communications, we were sure that we needed to be on the streets, so we were really active there with people informing and registering the participants in situ, to boost the participation of the people in the project,” he explained.

Representing the City of Alba Iulia, Valentin Voinica, the coordinator of the pilot, welcomed the participants to his city with satellite maps. He presented the two districts where the pilot takes place (Arnsberg and Goldis), the location of the smart containers, and the optimised transportation route for the collection and discard of the material.

Addressing the challenges posed by the pandemic, Voinica explained the changes needed to be made to the pilot in order to adapt it to the new reality . “We were supposed to start the pilot in April and had a strong collaboration with a social sciences faculty from the University, had meetings and events, online and offline registrations and so on. Unfortunately, in the beginning of March we entered in the emergency state and with the social distancing and the prohibition of workshops and meetings face-to-face, we were obliged to go mainly online,” he said.

Those interested in watching the session can find the recorded video on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RlZuk1F79Y

 

Register to the virtual study tour of the PlastiCircle pilot in Alba Iulia

6 October 2020

As part of the Circular Week 2020, PlastiCircle is organising a virtual study tour to the pilot in Alba Iulia (Romania). City authorities, waste managers, procurers, companies and other plastic stakeholders are invited to join this meeting taking place next October, 15 (10:00 - 11.00 CEST).

The PlastiCircle approach will be presented so that others can learn from the project experience, and think about replicating or adapting the solutions, technologies and processes developed and implemented with the goal of transforming plastic packaging waste into valuable products. From smart containers to increase collection rates of plastic waste, to cost-effective waste transport systems connected to IoT cloud platforms, these are some of the innovations being tested as part of PlastiCircle, an EU-funded project. Throughout the virtual study tours, speakers will also share their lessons-learnt.

Programme:

10:00  Welcome 

10:05  Introduction to the PlastiCircle Project, by César Aliaga (ITENE)

10:15  PlastiCircle  in the first pilot city: Valencia, by Las Naves (tbc)

10:25  Video Alba Iulia

10:30  PlastiCircle in the last pilot city: Alba Iulia, by Valentin Voinica (Alba Iulia)

10:40  Q&A

10:55  Wrap-up & Closing

 

To register, visit here.