City Governance Approaches to the Circular Management of Construction and Demolition Waste

The construction and demolition is a resource intensive sector, with Construction and Demolition Wastes (CDWs) considered as the largest waste streams accounting for 374 million tonnes in Europe. Although the 70% target for material recovery of CDWs set in the European Union Waste Directive Framework has been achieved by most European countries, the majority of these Circular Economy (CE) practices are through backfilling and downcycling [1]. This poses opportunities for improving the circular practices in CDWs.
With the increasing population and urbanization, cities have important role in realizing the CE ambitions for three reasons. These are (1) CE is incorporated in policy frameworks focusing on closing material loops in production and consumption in cities [2]; (2) City governments have the capabilities and resources to transition towards circularity of CDWs; and (3) City governments serve as the link between various stakeholders such as citizens, companies, and knowledge institutes, and therefore can drive changes towards the city.
This study analyzes how four European cities namely Riga, Tartu, Barcelona, and Kavala use different forms of governance to address the challenges and barriers and ultimately increase the circularity in CDWs. The methodology is qualitative, multiple case study using interviews, city reports, site visits, and validation workshop. Results show that cities deploy various forms of governance to address barriers and speed up the transition to a circular economy. These include contracting waste management companies, collaborating in local and international projects, fines for improper waste separation and illegal dumping, subsidies for recycled materials, and green procurement. Despite the use of different forms of governance, the majority of CE practices in the city are still focus on recycling and recovery, which is the lowest degree of circular practices. There is also an increasing focus on middle-level activities, such as repair and remanufacture, as well as on high-level activities such as rethink and reduce, yet these activities are mostly small scale and experimental. Therefore, cities are still learning on the process and have potential to further explore and integrate higher level circular practices.
The implications of this study for city governments include to (1) set stricter standards for circular procurement, (2) collaborate and establish strategic (long-term) partnerships between universities, citizen groups, NGOs and businesses, and (3) provide creative spaces for developing and implementing circular ideas.