Last week, there were a series of events in Brussels for the EU Green Week. Walking past the European parliament on the way to one of the events we spotted three posters with the slogan “invest in what matters”. They covered a range of topics that European citizens say they want more action on – environmental challenges, SMEs and the economy. In many ways, the circular economy has the potential to address all three. No wonder it's an appealing concept to policy makers. Unsuprising then, that it was chosen as the theme for this year’s EU green week.

(It was also good to see CircleUp’s favourite film, Flow, get a shout out too!)

The Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI) and European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform stakeholder event was a great opportunity to touch base with other projects working in the circular economy. In particular, it was lovely to have the chance to catch up with our sister project CARE | Circular Households. Together, we discussed the potential for stories to be ued to engage citizens with the circular economy in a World Café session titled “Exploring ways to engage citizens towards circular actions”. There were plenty of examples of interesting approaches to storytelling, including the ‘circular suitcase’ made by incommon-Innovative Circular Open that showed the power of inter-generational storytelling for rediscovering previously common circular activities. We also talked about how citizens can be engaged as story tellers themselves and how this might help them to foster a sense of identity as a “circular citizen” – we’re all storytellers.

In the plenary sessions, there was a real range of opinions presented in some of the and it’s clear there’s still a lot to be decided about the future circular economy we want. For example, there was discussion on to what extent the circular economy can compete with a linear economy on purely economic terms. The externalities of linear business models need to be made more explicit so that the competition is based, not just on profit, but also on social and environmental costs and benefits. Michael Kuhndt made a particularly persuasive call to consider a “circular society” not just a circular economy, highlighting the key importance of citizens in the future of the circular economy, and especially beyond just their typical role as consumers and disposers.

There were also some unresolved challenges such as the discussion around textile repair and reuse. Whilst there are some brilliant examples of circular economy actions around textiles, everybody recognised there’s a growing problem with low-quality clothes that are flooding the market and are rarely worthwhile repairing or reusing and almost always impossible to recycle. These kind of products mean that, even whilst 2nd hand clothes donations are increasing, the proportion that can actually be reused is reducing. It feels like some kind of policy intervention is needed here to limit production as it’s difficult for individual businesses, communities, or citizens to tackle this alone. But this comes with an uncomfortable acceptance that this would also mean limiting people’s choices, particularly for those who are more financially limited.

The 4th CCRI Coordination and Support Workshop, hosted on the Friday, was a great chance to reflect on the week. One of the key takeaways was how much circular economy activity is going on in communities all around Europe. Even whilst there’s still a lot of discussion and uncertainty at the policy level, people are choosing to take action and find solutions to make circularity a reality. Even on the walk to the station to catch a train home, we walked past a reuse shop (with a name very similar to ours). The more you look, the more you can find examples of the circular economy appearing all around us.