United Circles project launches to drive Circular Economy in Europe

The United Circles project consortium met in Valladolid to kick off an ambitious circular economy initiative, led by CARTIF and funded by the EU’s Horizon Europe program with over €20.5 million. The project focuses on waste reduction, resource recovery, and industrial-urban symbiosis to create zero-waste cities and decarbonized industries.
The industrial-urban symbiosis nodes will be expanded over time in a process of duplication and extension to other countries, such as Hungary, South Africa, Greece and the United Kingdom, in what the call ‘mirror demonstrators’. In addition, the organisations within the project, from Slovenia, Lebanon, Austria and France, will promote the possibility of forming ‘seed demonstrators’ to help develop a network of shareholders in order to obtain sufficient investors to start up the ‘Regional Circularity Hub’.

These demonstrators in Spain, Italy, and Turkey showcase circular solutions: a wastewater treatment plant in Salamanca converting waste into resources, a biorefinery in Italy turning used cooking oil into bioplastics, and 3D-printed buildings in Turkey using recycled construction waste. These models will be expanded to Hungary, South Africa, Greece, and the UK.

The project aims to achieve these general benefits:

• Demonstrate that achieving zero urban waste is prossible in a near-commercial scale environment by recovering resources from waste as secondary raw materials to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
• Reduce freshwater consumption by 50% and reuse 90% of the solid waste from the Salamanca Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP).
• Create healthier urban environments through industrial-urban symbiosis, reducing emissions, utilizing circular and renewable energy sources, and minimizing waste.
• Achieve European and international cooperation to meet the goals of the EU’s “Green Deal”.