Case Baltic States, Poland & Germany | Community Engagement Practices for Circular Economy

Author: Jelizaveta Krenjova-Cepilova, PhD, TalTech

This article examines the needs and opportunities in selected target areas (the Baltic States, Poland and Northern Germany) and explores how the selected engagement formats could be implemented and further developed in these contexts.

The stakeholder engagement practices presented in the Best Practices post below — including toy swap events, repair workshops, waste-sorting festivals and online waste-sorting courses — provide practical tools for promoting circular economy behaviour at community level. While these practices were developed and piloted within the TREASoURcE project, their underlying principles are broadly applicable and can be adapted to different national and local contexts.

Read our Best Practices:

Needs and Possibilities in Target Areas

By analysing local conditions, institutional frameworks and civic engagement cultures, we identify how the practices introduced earlier could support circular economy transitions across the region.

1. Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)

• Needs. Continued improvement in waste sorting accuracy and broader emphasis on prevention and reuse beyond recycling remain important priorities across the Baltic States¹.
• Potentials. The Baltic States have shown significant progress in waste management and recycling over the past decade, with countries such as Lithuania achieving relatively high recycling rates and Latvia making notable improvements through policy reforms and public awareness initiatives². High digital connectivity (especially in Estonia) reinforces effective deployment of online courses and hybrid learning; rising civic interest in circular solutions and availability of EU funding instruments support pilots. Comparative assessments, however, indicate variation across the Baltics in recycling performance and waste generation patterns, suggesting differentiated approaches per country³. 
• Implications. The differences indicate the need for differentiated stakeholder engagement strategies across the Baltic States. Digital awareness tools and online learning formats may be particularly effective in Estonia due to its high level of digitalisation, while initiatives such as toy-swap events and community-based repair activities could be integrated with school networks and local organisations in all Baltic States to strengthen community participation and awareness.
• Recommendations:
  • prioritise online courses (Estonia: high readiness);
  • combine toy swaps with school networks;
  • develop mobile repair outreach in smaller towns.

2. Poland

• Needs. Significant improvements are still required in waste sorting quality and public engagement at the municipal level. Although recycling rates have increased in recent years, Poland continues to face challenges in meeting EU circular economy targets and strengthening citizen participation in waste sorting and prevention activities⁴. Also, awareness of circular economy concepts remains limited⁵.
• Potentials. Poland’s large urban populations and the presence of active civil society organisations and NGOs provide favourable conditions for community-based awareness activities such as waste festivals, educational campaigns and repair initiatives.
• Implications. Festival-style awareness campaigns combined with practical sorting demonstrations can improve citizens’ understanding of local waste management systems and encourage correct waste separation. At the same time, expanding repair networks in larger cities could strengthen repair culture and promote reuse practices, particularly where volunteer communities and NGOs are already active⁶.
• Recommendations:
  • deploy festival-style awareness campaigns paired with on-site sorting demonstrations;
  • scale repair networks in cities with strong volunteer bases.

3. Northern Germany

• Needs. Germany has relatively high recycling rates⁷ and well-developed waste management systems, current policy discussions increasingly emphasise moving beyond recycling toward waste prevention, reuse and longer product lifetimes. This shift reflects the recognition that recycling alone cannot sufficiently reduce resource consumption or environmental impacts⁸.
• Potentials. Germany has a strong institutional framework supporting circular economy practices, including active civil society organisations, repair initiatives and municipal reuse programmes. The German National Circular Economy Strategy⁹ highlights the importance of extending product lifetimes through reuse and repair and aims to significantly reduce the consumption of primary raw materials while keeping materials in circulation longer. Digital platforms such as Repair Circle platform, developed in Berlin, demonstrate how technology can strengthen local repair ecosystems by connecting consumers with verified repair workshops and enabling transparent comparison of repair options¹⁰. The the platform supports the development of local repair networks and contributes to reducing electronic waste while strengthening local repair businesses and service providers¹¹.
• Implications. In this context, stakeholder engagement initiatives can continue strengthening repair and reuse practices through different formats. Municipal reuse centres and public awareness events can further promote waste prevention by encouraging product sharing, second-hand exchange and repair rather than disposal. The existence of digital repair platforms (such as Repair Circle) demonstrates how digital tools can complement community-based initiatives by connecting informal repair activities with professional repair services. Also, they demonstrate the potential for regional repair ecosystems that combine local workshops, volunteer initiatives and digital matchmaking platforms. Finally, these platforms could be replicated or adapted in other countries to support repair networks, facilitate access to repair services and promote a broader repair culture within circular economy transitions.
• Recommendations:
  • continue focusing on repair and reuse models (repair cafés or workshops, formalised repair networks);
  • upscale toy-swap concepts within municipal reuse centres;
  • develop festivals that foreground prevention (rather than only recycling);
  • continue developing regional repair ecosystems that combine local workshops, volunteer initiatives and digital matchmaking platforms.

Conclusions

The analysis presented in this section provides a general overview of the transferability of stakeholder engagement practices across the target regions. Due to the broad geographic scope covering multiple countries, the assessment inevitably involves a certain degree of generalisation. A more detailed investigation of each target area would require deeper research into local waste management systems, institutional arrangements, socio-economic conditions and stakeholder networks. Therefore, the findings should be considered as an initial orientation, while more context-specific analyses would be necessary to design tailored implementation strategies for each region.

Toy swaps, repair workshops, waste-sorting festivals and online courses are mutually reinforcing instruments that address different behavioural drivers and logistical challenges. Their transferability across Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Northern Germany is strong when implementation is calibrated to local legal frameworks, institutional capacity and cultural norms. The EU policy environment (including the Waste Framework Directive and emerging Right-to-Repair measures) provides both imperative and opportunity to embed these practices within long-term municipal strategies. Successful transfer requires co-creation, diversified funding, volunteer capacity, and an iterative learning approach.

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1. European Environment Agency (2025). Country profiles on waste prevention. Available at: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/topics/in-depth/waste-and-recycling/country-profiles-on-waste-prevention-2025 (Accessed: 4 March 2026). ↩︎
2. European Environment Agency (2024). Waste recycling in Europe – indicators and trends. Available at: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/waste-recycling-in-europe (Accessed: 4 March 2026). ↩︎
3. Štreimikienė, D. (2023). ‘Waste management in Baltic States: Comparative assessment’, Journal of International Studies. Available at: https://scispace.com/pdf/waste-management-in-baltic-states-comparative-assessment-58dgu8xbek.pdf?utm (Accessed: 4 March 2026). ↩︎
4. European Environment Agency (2024). Municipal and Packaging Waste Management Country Profile: Poland. Available at: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/countries/eea-member-countries/poland (Accessed: 4 March 2026). ↩︎
5. Falaciński, P. and Machowska, A. (2025). ‘Condition of Circular Economy in Poland’. In: Czarnecki, L., Garbacz, A., Wang, R., Frigione, M. and Aguiar, J.B. (eds.) Concrete-Polymer Composites in Circular Economy. ICPIC 2023. Springer Proceedings in Materials, vol. 61. Cham: Springer. Available at: https://rdcu.be/e6NqX (Accessed: 4 March 2026).
   WtE Monitor (2024). Country Profile: Poland – Waste Management and Recycling Performance. Available at: https://wtemonitor.com/country-profiles/country-profilepoland (Accessed: 4 March 2026).
   Kotlińska, J. and Żukowska, H. (2023). ‘Municipal waste management in municipalities in Poland – towards a circular economy model’, Economics and Environment.
   Kulczycka, J., Smol, M. and Avdiushchenko, A. (2020). ‘Transformation towards circular economy in municipal waste management systems: Model solutions for Poland’, Sustainability. ↩︎
6. Cox, J., Griffith, S. and Giorgi, S. (2024). ‘Community repair initiatives and circular economy transitions’, Cleaner and Circular Economy. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666791624000162 (Accessed: 4 March 2026). ↩︎
7. European Environment Agency (2025). Country profiles on waste prevention. Available at: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/topics/in-depth/waste-and-recycling/country-profiles-on-waste-prevention-2025 (Accessed: 4 March 2026). ↩︎
8. Federal Ministry for the Environment (2024). National Circular Economy Strategy. Available at: https://www.bundesumweltministerium.de/en/topics/circular-economy/circular-economy-strategy (Accessed: 4 March 2026). ↩︎
9. European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform (2024). German National Circular Economy Strategy. Available at: https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/en/strategies/german-national-circular-economy-strategy (Accessed: 4 March 2026). ↩︎
10. Through a single online request, users can receive repair offers from multiple local workshops, compare prices and book repair services, thereby reducing barriers to repair and encouraging consumers to repair products instead of replacing them. ↩︎
11. Repair Circle (2026). Repair Circle Platform. Available at: https://repaircircle.eu/en (Accessed: 4 March 2026). ↩︎