"As defined by Ellen MacArthur Foundation, as the name suggests, a ‘circular economy’ is a feedback-rich approach, (often described as ‘circularity’) with its subject matter the choices we make around resources – the economy. It rests in contradistinction to a linear economy. A circular economy uses insights into real world systems which are complex, adaptive systems. These systems are open to modelling and influence where we emphasise participation, connections and understanding consequences rather than the identification of parts and their manipulation. A maturing circular economy will face three big challenges, as Walter Stahel (architect and industrial analysis) frames it. The challenge of ‘Re-‘ that is the challenge to perfect re-using, re-manufacturing, re-designing and all the other ‘re-‘ actions that need to occur to keep resources at their highest value for the longest possible time. Secondly follows the challenge of ‘De’, when products can no longer be re-cycled in a value-adding way: ‘de-constructing’, ‘disassembling’, ‘de-taching’. The third challenge comes with a capital K – Knowledge. Education about the circular economy framework and the crucial knowledge for it, such as technical and economic understanding, as well as ‘materials-literacy’, needs to permeate every level of society, not just c-suites and experts. As stressed and highlighted during the discussion taken at the “Circular Economy Stakeholder Conference” (9-10 March 2017) in Brussels, every worker, consumer and so, adult should be equipped with such knowledge, thus, education stands as one of the building blogs of a circular economy, including awareness-raising in general public and business community and integration of circular concepts at all levels of education, starting from the lifelong learning approach. Thus, CYCLE project stands for a shift to the circular economy by supporting the integration of circular economy into adult education curriculum and outreach programs to increase awareness in the general public and so, contributing to the construction of knowledge society based on human capital development.""Education in all its forms at all levels will form an essential part of the transition to a circular economy. This must include the identification of the training needs of workers who needs to be part of the immediate change as well as the longer-term action of educating future generations"" - as highlighted in the EESC ""Communication from the commission to the European Parliament"" on Circular Economy. Education needs to extend to all levels from primary schools to companies, SMEs, investors and financiers, etc. However, according to Jean Pierre Maugendre, there are some additional key trends to be considered when analyzing the effects of a circular economy on employment and the labour force. These trends are expected to profoundly shape the future of businesses, as well as the skills requirements for employees. Life-long learning is of major importance, however, the process of life-long learning has not yet been effectively integrated. By improving the skills of adult trainers, and thus, supporting the introduction of Circular Economy competences in lifelong learning, CYCLE project is intended not only to fill in the identified gap (improving the learning pathway of adult education professionals), but also contributing to the transition agenda. The project started in October 2017 and it finished in September 2019. CYCLE partnership is formed by six organisations coming from six different European countries: Spain, Austria, Italy, Poland, Belgium and the United Kingdom, representing different approaches on learning methodologies, adult education and competences development. CYCLE project is intended to create a set of tools that improve and develop Non-Vocational Adult Trainers (NVATs) training competencies that ensure the introduction of circular economy competences in adult training, contributing to the creation of an attractive learning pathway for NVATs and facing the existing gap in this area. The main target group are “non-vocational adult trainers” defined as those trainers & facilitators that provide any form of adult learning – formal and not formal – that is not directly linked to the labour market. During project implementation, one main Intellectual Output has been elaborated: Intellectual output 2: CYCLE Competence Centre. To support the development of this platform we have built a competences framework - CYCLE Competences Framework as a reference not only for the project but for future initiatives on the area of training and circular economy."

Hubs for Circularity (H4C) are to be the European lighthouses of resource efficiency: through implementing best practice in industrial and urban symbiosis (I-US), the H4C are intended to achieve a step change in circular utilisation of resources and GHG emission reductions within given geographic areas. The European Community of Practice (ECoP) builds on and brings together ongoing work and expertise on H4C and I-US, initially supporting the H4C demonstrations funded under Horizon Europe. This project will develop both the ECoP network of stakeholders (commencing with funded H4C demo projects) together with an information and knowledge platform to enable stakeholders to take action. By creating awareness and fostering knowledge sharing between regions/cities and their industries, the H4C Platform will provide the tools and the evidence base for the approach to be adopted widely across Europe. A sustainable business model for deployment of the toolkit and services developed under the project will ensure the H4C ECoP is maintained well into the future. This consortium led by ISQ not only includes world leaders in the field (experienced in delivery, training, stakeholder engagement, models and methodologies) but also has the specific committed support and participation of many of the European bodies (those representing regions, cities, industry, educational institutions etc) that are needed to both disseminate the project outcomes and initiate implementation. Working closely with its sister consortium H4C-Europe, the H4C ECoP consortium is confident of delivering an ECoP and H4C platform that will achieve the target of greater circularity and carbon neutrality through profitable actions that also benefit communities/civil society.

BIOCIRCULARCITIES aims at supporting the development of innovative and comprehensive regulatory frameworks and roadmaps aligned with circular bioeconomy principles, centred on ‘bio-based waste’ and based on feedback from multi-actor participatory processes. The project has been designed to i) explore the circular economy potential of unexploited bio-based waste streams generated in 3 European urban contexts around the cities of Barcelona (ES), Naples (IT) and Pazardzhik (BG); ii) identify and analyse circular bioeconomy best practices across the EU that could be used as successful example to use in the pilot areas; iii) detect regulatory and business opportunities and shortcomings for the introduction of bio-based processes and products into local and international markets, and iv) propose proactive instruments and policy roadmaps for supporting the circular bioeconomy and expand it to the European context. The strength of the project lies in the capability to bring together multiple actors belonging to the quadruple helix (businesses, research institutions, public authorities and civil society) to build the collaborative knowledge needed to map the different perspectives about legal and market limits/potentials for developing circular bioeconomy. Having a holistic picture of the legal and market opportunities and barriers in the 3 case study areas will make it possible to check the applicability of the identified best practices and other feasible solutions. The fiscal and economic impact due to the introduction of specific regulations will be considered to foresee the investments needed to support industry in making changes towards a more circular use of bioresources. Results obtained at local level will be a source of contents to develop generic guidelines to be exploited and further developed through communication, dissemination and exploitation actions at local and international levels.

PPI4Waste is based on an integrated approach which will permit to define needs, targets, improvement of functional performances, and monitor the complete cycle of preparation activities for PPI process to be implemented in the waste sector, while making know-how on procedures for innovation procurement widely available through the establishment of buyer’s group, making state-of-the-art solutions accessible to other procurers, capacity building and assessment of feasibility plan of uptaking PPI in the waste sector. This 30-month project, whose workplan has a concise structure that supports the workflow to achieve its main aim: The overall objective of the project is to achieve resource efficiency, sustainable waste management and sustainable consumption throughout Europe by increasing the use of innovative public procurement through coordinated a structured and coordination action of networking, capacity building, and dissemination. The cornerstone of the project is how to boost resource efficiency through PPI, on the basis of the waste hierarchy and the establishment of the buyer’s group of public procurers in the first phase of the project will permit to achieve all objectives towards the reinforcement of early deployment of eco-innovative solutions for resource efficiency and waste management through joint or coordinated PPI processes.