Introduction

The EU Horizon 2020 funded CityLoops project focuses on closing the material loops of two central sectors of any city in terms of material flows, societal needs and employment, namely the construction and biomass sectors. Due to their sizes, they represent a considerable opportunity for cities to transform their metabolism and economy towards a more circular state.

Within this project, seven European cities, amongst those also the City of Bodø are planning to implement demonstration actions to kickstart their circularity journey. To better understand what the current circularity status quo is, as well as the impact of these actions, and the efforts needed to transform their sector, a Sector-Wide Circularity Assessment method was developed. This method combines a circular city and circular sector definition, a material flow and stock accounting method, as well as circularity indicators. The sector itself was defined in terms of a number of representative materials that make up a large share of the sector and associated economic activities. The biomass sector is made up of 12 materials, depicted as icons here, which were studied along the entirety of their supply chains. Altogether, these elements help to set a solid knowledge and analytical foundation to develop future circularity roadmaps and action plans.

The assessment was carried out by the cities themselves after receiving extensive training in the form of courses on data collection (construction and biomass) and data processing. Numerous additional insights can be found in the individual Data Hubs of each city.

This current Sector-Wide Circularity Assessment report provides contextual information on the city and the economic sector under study. It then illustrates how circular these sectors are through circularity indicators and a Sankey diagram. Finally, it analyses and interprets the results, presents the limitations from the data used and offers recommendations about how to make this sector more circular.

(* The italic texts in this report were written by Metabolism of Cities' Aristide Athanassiadis and Carolin Bellstedt. They provide relevant general information and serve as connecting elements of the single report parts.)

Urban context

To contextualise the results of the sector-wide circularity assessment, this section provides population and land use information data of the city. In addition, population and area of the city under study, as well as its corresponding NUTS3, NUTS2 and country were included. Data for these scales were added to better understand how relevant and important the approximations are when downscaling data from these scales to a city level.

Population of Bodø

Rose dramatically over time, see link here.

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Land use

Data source

Intro to the numbered list.

1. There are 20 types.
2. They are made up of 4 groups.
3. The groups are ...

Economic context of biomass sector

This section puts into perspective the economic context of the sector under study. It describes how many people are employed in this sector, as well as who the main actors involved (from all lifecycle stages for the sector’s materials) are.

The biomass sector in Bodø

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The actors of the biomass sector

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Indicators

To monitor the progress of this economic sector towards circularity, a number of indicators were proposed and measured. Altogether, these indicators depict several facets of circularity of the sector. As such, they need to be considered in combination rather than in isolation when assessing circularity. In addition, these indicators can be compared to other cities or spatial scales (such as the country level). However, this has to be done with great care and use of the contextual elements in the previous sections of the report. Finally, the value measured from these indicators can be traced over time to track the sector’s progress towards circularity.

The biomass indicators chosen from the vision element 3, Closing material loops and reducing harmful resource use:

Indicators 34, 41, 42

• Domestic material consumption (DMC)
• Share of secondary materials in domestic material consumption
• EU self-sufficiency for raw materials

In the strategy of the city of Mikkeli (strategy 2018-2021): Establishing new opportunities from the use of material flows in Mikkeli, the idea is to increase the utilization of reused and recycled materials. This saves in extraction and use of virgin materials. In Mikkeli, biowaste has bee recycled for years into soil products, but now the intention is to upcycle the biowaste material into biogas and use the by-products of the biogas process into soil improvers and soil products. In producing biogas from biowaste, it will save in the usage of fossil fuels in the city. Soil improvers such as extracted fertilizers from the reject water of processed biowaste will save in extraction and use of virgin fertilizer chemicals.

Since Finland does not have resources of oil and other fossil fuels such as peat and coal used for energy and heating are being run down because of negative environmental effects, new energy resources are needed. Wood is still an abundant resource in Finland, but cold winters set a challenge in self-sufficiency in this resource, also the use of wood for energy and heat needs to be regulated in order not to overconsume our forests. This is a delicate balance between the needs of consuming and the resources of the country and city. The expected outcome of these actions in Mikkeli is 5% Reduced consumption of virgin materials at city level compared to the start of the CityLoops project.

The results of the SCA research for domestic material consumption in Mikkeli is 17 tonnes per capita and is a slightly higher value than the average value in Europe with 13.4 tonnes per capita. Compared to the value of Finland in which the value is at 31.6 the value difference to Mikkeli is of 14 tonnes per capita. This result is very interresting and seems that in this comparrison the city of Mikkeli is doing quite well with using less resources in material consuption.

Indicators 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61

• Quantity of material for anaerobic digestion
• Quantity of material for composting
• Amount of sector specific waste that is produced
• End of Life Processing Rate
• Incineration rate
• Landfilling rate

In the city strategy of Mikkeli (2018-2021) the aim is to reduce traffic emissions and increase the use of biofuels in the city for transportation. In this aim it is vital to be able to provide the city with its local biofuel made of local biowaste. Also promoting and adding coverage of the biofuel distribution network and the number of biofuel vehicles used in the city sets a good base for a more environmentally friendly use and self-sufficient production of fuels needed. Previously, there has been only one biogas plant in Mikkeli, but now another one has been recently taken to use in year 2021.

To be able to produce and distribute more biofuels in Mikkeli, more biowaste is needed to be collected in the city. The city strategy (2018-2021) has the aim of increasing the recycling of bio-waste by improving sorting and collection (residential waste, waste recycling: Baseline 98.6% / Target 99%).

The study in Mikkeli (Xamk`s study of waste composition in Peitsari area) show that there is still much biowaste to salvage from going to incineration because of insufficient recycling by the citizens. The study showed that about 35% of the municipal solid waste is biomaterial that could be used in upcycled products such as biofuel, soil products and soil improvers rather than going to incineration. Landfilling is not an issue in Finland or Mikkeli, since non-hazardous biowaste has not been landfilled for a long time but has been composted into soil products. The CityLoops project in Mikkeli have several expected outcomes for the collection, treatment and use of biomaterials, these are:

• Increasing upcycled amount of CDW/soil and organic waste 50% by the end of project.
• Increasing recycling/reuse rate of CDW/soil and organic matter: Increased recycling rate of biowaste in the demonstration area (Peitsari) within the demo action.
• Increasing recycling/reuse rate of organic matter within the city boundaries: increase of soil products made from biowaste.
• 10% reduction in the amount of organic waste landfilled or incinerated.

In the results should be noted that some waste is exported to incineration, this waste includes the biowaste within MSW (not recycled by the citizens), stump waste and other non hazardous wood waste. These waste fractions cannot be recycled into soil material but are still of organic matter and weigh a lot in the total ammount of biowaste. Also ash (from heat and energy production plants) and grease separation well sludge cannot all be recycled into soil products so they are recycled in building the grounds of the landfill. Benchmarking the different indicators therefore need more insight in the particular matters that are studied for the comparison to be just and to be able to be taken into account. It is possible that these wood materials, ash and grease are not accounted in the compared numbers of the other studies (countries and EU) and exporting some materials to incineration might not give the right picture in the calculated indicators. For more information in the biowaste materials that are icluded in biowaste in Mikkeli, please see the collected data .

The indicators reveal that overall, the circularity of the city is still very low, except for the share of secondary materials in DMC is already quite high.

Visualisations

Measuring circularity is a data heavy exercise. Numerous datasets were collected and visualised throughout the sector-wide circularity assessment process. To synthesise these findings, a Sankey diagram illustrates how material flows from the studied economic sector are circulating from one lifecycle stage to another. The height of each line is proportional to the weight of the flow. This diagram therefore helps to quickly have an overview of all the materials flows that compose the sector and their respective shares. The flows that are coloured in light blue in the Sankey diagram, are return flows. This means that they flow in the opposite direction of the lifecycle stages and are subjected to reuse, redistribution, or remanufacturing. Their size relative to the others is a good indication for the materials' circularity.

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Data quality assessment

Numerous datasets were collected and considered in the sector-wide circularity assessment. In some cases, datasets were not available for some materials or for some lifecycle stages for the studied sector. Therefore, estimations need to be done by looking at data at higher spatial scales (region or country). This section qualitatively assesses how reliable the data used is.

Data quality

Before describing data gaps and assumptions, the overall data quality is considered. It is expressed through four data quality dimensions that are depicted in the data quality matrix: reliability, completeness, temporal correlation, and spatial correlation. Each dimension has its own criteria for the ranking of high (green), medium (yellow) and low (red), which is based on this Pedigree report and shown in the table below. There can be additional explanations in some cells, as supporting information.

Data analysis

This section analyses the Sankey diagram developed in the previous section. It discusses and interprets the results for the sector-wide circularity assessment. It also reflects on how the current demonstration actions fit within the bigger picture of the sector, as well as how they could be upscaled to accelerate the transition towards a more circular sector.

References

• Norway
• Nord-Norge
• Nordland
• Population size Apeldoorn (1995-2020)
• Land use Apeldoorn 2015
• Land use Apeldoorn 2015
• Header image: Mariusz Paździora, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons