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Urgency felt by participants of circular product chain initiatives
Mattresses
Concrete
Clothing
Urgency
High
Medium
Scattered
Number of
participants
Limited
Many
Many
Scale
National
National
International,
national and
regional
Utrecht Sustainability Institute organised a Circular Economy Lab
for all partners of the product chain and the municipalities. During
this lab, the partners expressed the need to strive for a more
circular solution and to take a joint national effort. Because of this
shared sense of urgency, we could pursue the initiative.
In drafting the Concrete Agreement, a greater variety of actors
with diverging interests was involved. In the preparatory phase,
some actors had clear, ambitious goals; others had a wait-and-see
attitude or acted as watchdogs. However, all actors felt societal
pressure to improve their environmental performance and meet
national CO 2
targets and the government’s circular ambitions.
This triggered the needed shared sense of urgency, resulting in
a Concrete Agreement with ambitious targets for CO 2
reduction,
circularity and biodiversity in 2030.
The clothing case consisted of an even more diverse group of
actors than the two other chains. On the one hand, a small but
growing number of innovative start-ups and scale-ups felt a need
to transform the textile sector into a slower circular sector. On the
other hand, the dominant fast fashion brands were focused on