Page 11 - U4SSC: A guide to circular cities, June 2020

purposes. These examples transcend economic activities and enhance the utilization of city assets
beyond the economic ones.

The circularity approach proposed in this study is meant to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of
city assets and products by extending either their own or their constituents’/components’ utilization and
life span. This increase is achieved by applying targeted action items (referred to in this study as circular
action items) on city assets and products, such as sharing, recycling, refurbishing, re-using, replacing,
and digitising. Action items are a set of specific, discrete, outcome-orientated tasks that can be applied
to the city assets and products to improve their utilization and life span. This document explains the
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purpose and vision behind a circular economy, while providing an implementation framework on how
to establish circularity within the context of cities.

2.3 Definitions of circular economy

The ‘Guide to Circular Cities’ does not provide a new definition for circular economy. Instead, it has
compiled a list of existing definitions of circular economy, in order to illustrate the concept. In general,
a circular economy is an economic system where products and services are traded in closed loops or
cycles. Table 1 lists some of the well-known circular economy definitions and their interpretations.

Table 1: Existing definitions of circular economy

Definition
A circular economy is restorative and regenerative by design, and aims to keep products, components,
and materials at their highest utility and value at all times, while reducing waste streams. A concept that
distinguishes between technical and biological cycles, the circular economy is a continuous, positive
development cycle. It preserves and enhances natural capital, optimizes resource yields, and minimizes
system risks by managing finite stocks and renewable flows, while reducing waste streams.
Source: Recommendation ITU-T L.1020: ‘Circular economy: Guide for operators and suppliers on
approaches to migrate towards circular ICT goods and networks’.
Circular economy refers to the ‘production and consumption of goods through closed loop material flows
that internalize environmental externalities linked to virgin resource extraction and the generation of waste
(including pollution)’.
Source: Sauvé, S., S. Bernard and P. Sloan (2016), ‘Environmental sciences, sustainable development and
circular economy: Alternative concepts for trans-disciplinary research’, Environmental Development, Vol.
17, pp. 48-56.
‘Circular economy is an approach that would transform the function of resources in the economy. Waste
from factories would become a valuable input to another process – and products could be repaired,
re-used or upgraded instead of thrown away’.
Source: Preston, F. (2012), ‘A Global Redesign? Shaping the Circular Economy’, Briefing Paper, London:
Chatham House.
Circular economy ‘refers mainly to physical and material resource aspects of the economy – it focuses on
recycling, limiting and re-using the physical inputs to the economy, and using waste as a resource leading to
reduced primary resource consumption’.
Source: EEA (European Environment Agency) (2014), ‘Resource-efficient Green Economy and EU
policies’, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

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