Page 16 - U4SSC: A guide to circular cities, June 2020

3.2 Circular city actions

Circular city actions refer to specific, discrete, outcome-orientated tasks that can be applied to the
city assets and products shown in Figure 1, to improve their utilization and lifespan. Sharing, recycling,
refurbishing, re-using, replacing, and digitising have been identified in this Guide as the potential
circular action items.

Sharing: Sharing is the joint use of city assets and products.

Recycling: Recycling is the process of converting city assets and products arriving at their end of life
into new materials and objects to make them consumable or usable again. What is treated as waste
and being thrown away as trash could potentially be useful again through recycling. It is an alternative
to ‘conventional’ waste disposal (i.e. incineration and landfilling) that can save materials and, among
other positive environmental impacts, help lower greenhouse gas emissions. It can also reduce energy
usage, air pollution (from incineration), and water pollution (from landfilling), and so on.

Refurbishing: Refurbishing is about restoring an old city asset or product to bring it to a functional or
better condition. Refurbishing is a potential circular action that can be applied to extend the lifespan
of city assets and products.

Re-using: It involves using a product or material again, with the same function or a new one.

Replacing: Replacing refers to filling the place of, or providing a substitute for, a city asset or product.
Replacement of city assets and products or their components may enhance their circularity potential
by extending their life span and utilization.

Digitizing: Digitization refers to “taking analogue information and encoding it into zeroes and ones
so that computers can store, process, and transmit such information” . Digitization of information
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about city assets and products allows the cities to reach more customers, reduce cost and reduce
environmental impacts.

3.3 Circular city outputs

When applying circular action items to a city asset, a circular city output is produced. There are many
potential circular city outputs given the large number of city assets and products and the number of
circular city actions identified in the previous two sub-sections. Table 1 below provides a template
for plotting the potential circular city outputs when a circular action item is applied on a city asset or
product. The circular city output is plotted on the cell where circular action item intersects with city
asset or product.

8 U4SSC: A guide to circular cities