Amsterdam
Circular Economy as 'Learning by Doing'
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Circular Economy as 'Learning by Doing'
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City/Country
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Initiative
The Building blocks for the new strategy Amsterdam Circular 2020-2025 represents the main initiative for a holistic circular economy strategy for the period 2020-2025, with a forward view to 2030. It’s the result of a process, started in 2015 with the Sustainable Agenda and characterized by a learning by doing approach, supported by action perspectives and an evaluation process in order to define the main value-chains to work on.
Level
City level
Period of
Implementation
2020-2025
Core vision
The municipality of Amsterdam wants to transition towards a circular economy as soon as possible. Over the last few years, the city has already completed over 70 projects (p.46) that contribute towards a circular economy. To bring the circular economy into mainstream practice as soon as possible, Amsterdam is now focused on upscaling and accelerating these existing circular projects. To do this, the municipality aims to employ all of its municipal instruments available. On top of that, the municipality lobbies on the national and European level for enabling financial, fiscal and legal frameworks.
Implementation & Governance
To realise the vision of a thriving city, the Municipality of Amsterdam has adopted the Doughnut economics model, that brings together environmental sustainability and social justice topics under the same umbrella, in an easy-to-grasp framework. To create a strategy for a Circular Amsterdam 2020-2025, Kate Raworth’s Doughnut model was used as a powerful tool. A participatory trajectory was designed to bring together all involved stakeholders. Together, they formulated the directions for a circular Amsterdam (the first City Doughnut). Over 50 officials from the various departments in the city and region, and over 100 stakeholders (including businesses, experts and knowledge institutions) from the three value chains identified were brought together. The process comprised of four steps:
1. Mirroring the current targets of the city with the Doughnut model;
2. Developing holistic circular economy directions for the three priority value chains;
3. Enhancing the current targets to align them with the ambitions in the circular economy directions and the Doughnut model;
4. Enriching and validating the directions with knowledge from the ground.
For each step, a workshop was organised with the various stakeholders. The outcome of the four workshops was a set of seventeen directions for pursuing circularity in the 3 value-chains:
Construction (6 directions:1. Foster circular area development through flexible zoning, climate adaptation and regenerative urban design (such as Buiksloterham, Haven-Stad, Stadstuin Overtoom, Bajeskwartier); 2. Incorporate circular criteria into the land issuing and tendering of all construction and infrastructural projects and in the Public spaces; 3. Enable the construction of adaptable and modular buildings; 4. Scale-up circular dismantling and mono-stream collection; 5. Support the use of renewable and secondary construction materials; 6. Stimulating circular retrofitting in private and social housing);
Biomass and food (6 directions: 7. Foster circular food production in urban and peri-urban areas; 8. Encourage healthy, sustainable and plant-based food consumption by all citizens; 9. Minimise food waste from retail, catering and households; 10. Increase separate organic waste collection from households and businesses to enable high-value treatment; 11. Scale-up high-value transformation of residual biomass and food flows; 12. Accelerate the closing of local nutrient cycles from biomass and water flows);
Consumer goods (5 directions: 13. Prevent overconsumption and minimise the use of fast moving consumer goods; 14. Stimulate high-value recycling of complex consumer goods; 15 Encourage the shared and long-term use of products; 16. Expand Craftmanship networks in neighbourhoods to repair and restore products; 17. Promote the creation and use of standardised and modular products to enable reuse, repair and recycling).
Together they form the building blocks for an inclusive and thriving Amsterdam. The directions are built upon existing initiatives, best practices and (inter)national policies, as well as strategies that have been pursued over the past years in Amsterdam. Besides environmental issues, the directions cover social topics, such as social equality and employment opportunities. These three value chains are important to the metropolitan economy and have a high environmental impact. Moreover, there was already a lot of social energy present in these value chains to make the transition to a circular economy and they connect closely to the priorities of the European Commission, the State and the AMA (Amsterdam Metropolitan Area).
Instruments and Levers
To give effect to the circular economy direction, a set of levers and policy instruments has been recommended. The Levers (digitalisation, true and fair pricing, innovation networks, system thinking, experimentation, logistics, jobs and skills) are applicable to all actors in the circular economy and to all value-chains, whereas Policy Instruments (regulation, legislation, fiscal frameworks, direct financial support, economic frameworks, knowledge advice and information, collaboration platforms and infrastructure, governance) are to be used by the municipality specifically.
Governance
City of Amsterdam
Partners
For everyone of the 17 directions, the strategy highlights the role of the City of Amsterdam, based on the Policy Instruments, and of the other stakeholders involved (Regional, National and International Governments, Businesses, Non-profit organisations and interests groups, Utility and Public service provide, Knowledge/Educational institutions, Civil society) with a collect of recommendations. Particularly, the stakeholders actions suggested are based on their main role (e.g. assessment for Knowledge/Educational institutions, check quality for Non-profit organisations and interests groups, engagement for civil society and so on).
Indicators and
Monitoring system
No indicators or Monitoring systems are suggested
Budget allocated
Not specified
Results, impacts and learnings
The city of Amsterdam wants to become a circular city, and aims to use 50% fewer primary raw materials by 2030 and become 100% circular by 2050 at the latest.
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