Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - FORCE (Cities Cooperating for Circular Economy)

Teaser

The overall objective is to minimise the leakage of materials from the linear economy and work towards a circular economy. Specific objectives are to:• Engage cities, enterprises, citizens and academia in 16 participatory value chain based partnerships to create and develop...

Summary

The overall objective is to minimise the leakage of materials from the linear economy and work towards a circular economy. Specific objectives are to:
• Engage cities, enterprises, citizens and academia in 16 participatory value chain based partnerships to create and develop eco-innovative solutions together.
• Develop 10 viable end-markets by demonstrating new applications for plastic waste, metals (EEE devices), biowaste and wood waste.
• Develop a governance model for cities based on value chain based partnerships.
• Develop decision support tools and assess the actual impact by use of Big Data.
• Ensure replication through the FORCE Academy aiming at enterprises, citizens and policy makers.

In FORCE, the \'leakage\' of plastic and metals is minimised through activities to prevent the generation of waste (reuse), to prolong products’ life (repair), to reuse spare parts (remanufacture), and through recycling and recovery of waste materials. Biological waste/materials (wood, food and biowaste) are prevented through donation (meals), used as raw material in biochemical processes, recycled in farming, or recovered in energy production.

The partnership approach is based on a value chain concept and seeks to engage stakeholders across the entire material flow, from design to reprocessing, to create the right preconditions for demonstrating eco-innovative solutions. The partnership approach is implemented directly in the organisational structure of FORCE. The four cities will establish a ‘lead partnership’ for one material/waste stream. The other three cities will establish a ‘local partnership’ for the same material to gain and share experience. In both lead and local partnerships, stakeholders and partners will discuss and contribute to solutions. All 16 partnerships have been established and have started working.

Examples of the ten eco-innovative applications are: new plastic products made from recycled post-consumer plastics, repair shops for electrical and electronical devices and for wood products, apps for citizens/consumers and retail/restaurants, and new bio-economy applications such as proteins and acids made from wood and biowaste.

Work performed

\"For plastic waste, the manufacturing tests show that post-consumer plastic waste can be used as a raw material for several new applications. With well-known technologies, it has been possible for the City of Copenhagen to separate a flexible plastic fraction and obtain a good quality, as 90% of foils are made of polyethylene. So far, a total of 7 different prototype applications have been manufactured using post-consumer foils. A minimum of 3 further applications will be produced.

Another result in Copenhagen is that household collection of all plastics, instead of only rigid plastics packaging leads to significantly increased rates.

Consist ITU has launched a public portal www.CYCEL.de aiming to inform citizens about their options when it comes to handling their old electric and electronic devices. To improve the collection of WEEE, Stadtreinigung Hamburg has increased the number of containers for \"\"small\"\" WEEE. For electrical and electronic devices, an iconic second-hand shop/Pop-Up store was opened in Hamburg in November 2017.

To prevent food and biowaste, a web app and key functionalities to food waste prevention has been developed by Addapters with collaboration from Dariacordar. The aim with the app is to be used by big surplus food donors, and an Online Indicator Reporting Tool. A pilot test has been conducted.

The Municipality of Lisbon will start a door-to-door collection of kitchen waste in 6,700 households and a programme for home and community composting in 4,000 households. For these activities, most of the tendering procedures have been finalized.

For wood waste, the City of Genoa and AMIU have redesigned the collection schemes for four types of wood waste that will be implemented in an Urban Lab. The partnership looks for new applications (prevention and upcycling) and cascaded use of wood waste. TICASS and Active Celle have analyzed the market and opportunities for wood waste and are reasearching hos to use green and wood waste in bio-economy. Enzyme efficiency in terms of lignocellulosic biomass reduction has been evaluated, resulting in attesting promising and encouraging efficiency rate around 30%, for the further steps of the research. Through a pre-treatment the fibres are opened, thus making the biomass polymers more accessible, a factor which affects the availability of cellulose for microbial enzymes. For this purpose, many testing activities have been performed in the laboratory.

FORCE will test and evaluate an innovative model of collaboration between public and private actors to close resource loops. HafenCity University Hamburg has finalised the analysis of the cooperation structures, processes and policy instruments in the four FORCE lead partnerships and the respective governance contexts established in Copenhagen, Hamburg, Lisbon and Genoa. Some of the findings from the analysis are that the key drivers for public-private cooperation along the value chain vary between the public and private stakeholders in each of the four partner cities. For public authorities, these drivers are translated into the commitment to reach political goals through policy provisions for strategic partnerships, seeking innovation, abilities and other resources from private companies. On the other side, beyond business opportunities with other financial benefits, key drivers for private stakeholders to engage in cooperation include image building (or visibility), acquisition of new knowledge emerging from the cooperation, new contacts and overcoming legislative burdens (e.g. End of Waste issue for wood waste).\"

Final results

The partnership to prevent food and biowaste, deals not only with surplus food from supermarkets, but it also redistributes cooked meals from restaurants and canteens.

The lead partnership on plastic waste has identified 27 promising applications for further consideration. The partners narrowed them down to the ten most promising applications using a “decision matrix” (expected business potential and expected production difficulty level) and a range of selection criteria, such as the potential annual uptake of post-consumer plastic. If we can manufacture some of these products satisfactorily, the results open up for production of other types of similar products, which widens the business potential.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.ce-force.eu/.