Hello, I would like to know what indicators obtained from the available city statistics can I use for the state of implementation of the circular economy in the urban environment (eg recycling rate)? I am primarily talking about quantitative data, but if possible, I would like to show the progress of building a circular economy also in the context of the urban economy and the social environment of the city.
Thank you so much.
I think it can be for example volume of municipal waste per capita, I mean mixed residual waste which shows level of waste prevention and recycling in the city. Arnika gives every year kind of "Waste prevention Oscar" awards to municipalities which were able to produce lowest amount of mixed municipal waste per capita in the Czech Republic (https://arnika.org/odpadovy-oscar). There are also examples of good practice in waste management prepared municipality by municipality available (https://arnika.org/kauzy-odpady). Unfortunately they are all in Czech. In general this is a way forward towards to zero waste which is definitely part of circular economy.
Also decreased releases of POPs, such as dioxins (PCDD/Fs) might be another criterion used as it shows that materials are recycled in the way less harmful but there are not much data available city by city. Some potentially helpful studies might be these two:
Technical Report Zero Waste as Best Environmental Practice for Waste Manageme...
by Milan Havel , Ruta Bendere and others, andTechnical Report Crucial Elements of the Pollutant Release and Transfer Regis...
by Jindrich Petrlik , Lee Bell and Kristína ŽulkovskáThese are just little parts of whole circular economy picture which should include used water resources, energy saved by the city and so on. Regarding the wastes, there shoud be also number of places where people can offer used products for resuse or ask for their renovation etc. This is part of mentioned way towards "zero waste" society.
The typical would waste volumes (as suggested by Lenka Petrlikova ) or you could do LCA. I've seen people measure number of material transactions (how many times the material changes hand or capacity to fulfill needs within a specific geographic region).
I think you have to create a balance with input and outputs - overtime.
the time factor can give you the circularity (how much the material stay within the local economy).
You can also look at it from a financial perspective (in away developing a financial statement for an urban area...). There are just ideas - I haven't read papers using this.
You can have a set of indicators that allow you to assess/measure your case.
I think that it depends also on oportunity given to inhabitants in urban area to contribute to circularity. For example how many sorts of waste is possible to be collected separately. Oportunity to compost biodegradable waste and/or to collect it separately is very important part of it. In this way circularity can becom a crosscutting issue with releases of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) as result of sustainable or less sustainable waste management. Following report is interesting in this way: Technical Report Zero Waste as Best Environmental Practice for Waste Manageme...
and here you can find full concept of zero waste cityPresentation Zero Waste City
by Gaurav H Tandon . There is more information about "zero waste" concept exactly in urban concepts available, e.g. by Atiq Uz Zaman (unfortunately without full papers on Researchgate).