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04.08.2023

TREASoURcE report: Territories’ CE activities and state of-the-art of CE

The report provides a comprehensive overview of the circular economy (CE) in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Estonia. It analyses existing strategies, roadmaps, and action plans for CE and key value chains like plastics, EV batteries, and bio-based waste. The findings highlight variations in progress between national and regional levels and emphasize the importance of cross-regional collaboration, actionable strategies, and knowledge sharing for a successful transition to CE.

The case countries, regions and municipalities

The report differentiates between strategies, action plans, and roadmaps. Drawing on the definition of circular economy (CE) strategies and roadmaps set by the European Economic and Social Committee, these documents aim to further the transition towards a circular economy by presenting clearly defined objectives or desired outcomes. These include key steps or milestones towards the envisaged future within a specific timeframe.

Typically, strategies and roadmaps provide an overarching framework for ongoing initiatives across various sectors, involving different players at various stages of the value chain or development. They also describe instruments that encourage the transition and inspire stakeholders and actors to get involved.

Table: Recognised CE strategies, plans and roadmaps in the Nordic countries.

In general, the work can be divided into four interconnected steps:
1) developed an analytical framework based on relevant literature,
2) identified relevant documents on national, regional, and local levels in the five countries,
3) analysed the identified documents guided by the developed analytical framework, and
4) synthesized data from the analysis and wrote out both national and comparative analyses of the
data gathered from the documents.

Table: Recognised plastic strategies, action plans and roadmaps in the Nordic countries.
Table: Recognised biobased strategies, action plans and roadmaps in the Nordic countries.
Table: Recognised battery strategies, action plans and roadmaps in the Nordic countries.

The study resulted in open-source documents primarily derived from the respective government websites. On a regional and local level the TREASoURcE has reviewed 18 documents for Finland, 18 documents for Norway, 3 documents for Sweden, 8 documents for Denmark, and 9 documents for Estonia; a total of 56 documents.

It became apparent early on that the types of documents found at the regional and local levels differed from the national documents. While the national level featured more defined strategies, roadmaps, and action plans for the circular economy (CE), the regions and municipalities did not necessarily have any such documents.

Link to the report: https://treasource.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/TREASoURcE-D1.1-Territories-CE-activities-and-state-of-the-art.pdf