home
> News
> News Archives
News Archives
May 13, 2024
EU policymakers recently decided to introduce a direct ban on the destruction of textiles and footwear, with some exemptions for small, micro and medium-sized companies.
In this briefing, the EEA takes stock of what is currently known about the volumes and destruction of returned and unsold textiles in Europe. The growth of online shopping, flexible return practices, changed consumer preferences and fast-fashion business strategies in Europe have resulted in increased shares of returned and unsold textiles.
Over the past years, fast fashion and luxury brands have been reported as destroying returned or unsold clothing, shoes and other textiles. Textile product destruction is a very good example of a ‘take-make-waste’ approach.
It analyses how European countries include circular economy and waste actions in their reporting on climate change mitigation policies and measures and how the introduction of additional measures can help accelerate future reductions of GHG emissions.
The briefing finds that waste management and the circular economy have considerable potential for mitigating climate change. Therefore, countries would benefit from including policies and measures in these areas in their climate policy mix.
Learn more at European Environment Agency website.
...continue to read
category : Topics
May 7, 2024
The Buildings and Climate Global Forum, co-organised by France and the United Nations Environment Programme, with the support of the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction, took place on 7-8 March 2024 in Paris and gathered for the first time ministers and high-level representatives of key organisations, to initiate a new impetus in international collaboration for building decarbonisation and resilience after the Conference of the Parties (COP) 28.
During this event, the Circular Built Environment group - led by the Ministry of the Environment Finland and RMIT University and operating under the Materials hub managed by GlobalABC, One Planet Network and Life Cycle Initiative - organised with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development a thematic session on the 'Circular economy in the built environment - A solution to the triple planetary crisis' on the 7th of March, with support from UNEP, Holcim, WorldGBC, UNOPS, UNIDO, and RMIT University.
The session raised awareness of the importance of circularity in the built environment and addressed challenges related to policy and market development encouraging the audience to focus on moving away from the linear model and instead committing to a circular economy model of the buildings and construction sector.
Three circular economy related recommendations of the Ten Whole Life Cycle recommendations for the Buildings breakthrough were launched in the session. The 10 consensus driven recommendations were developed by the Materials Hub and its two parallel working groups Circular Built Environment and Whole Life Policy Coalition that is led by the UKs Department of Energy Security through extensive stakeholder engagement including over 100 academic, policy and industry professionals from over 42 countries. To find our more please visit: https://globalabc.org/news/10-whole-life-cycle-recommendations-buildings-breakthrough
The Circularity assessment framework assessing the state of circularity of the built environment at the national level was also launched in the session. The Circularity assessment framework is funded by Finland, led by UNEP and developed by UNOPS. The piloting of the framework will start in Bangladesh this month by UN-Habitat. WBCSD also announced the launch of the Buildings CTI tool that assesses circularity at the buildings level in the session. To find out more about these two assessment frameworks please visit: https://globalabc.org/resources/calls-for-proposals/call-pilots-circularity-frameworks
...continue to read
category : Topics
