Mechelen Presenting At EU Green Week
CECI project partner from Mechelen participated in EU Green Week. Presenting ambitious circular goals for 2030.
During the breakfast webinars organized by the Flemish Association for Municipalities and Cities (VVSG), the Flemish Institute of Technological Research (VITO), Circular Flanders, and Möbius Business Redesign as a partner event in the EU Green week, the city of Mechelen introduced how the city integrates circular economy principles in their climate action plan and policy plan for 2020-2025. The city of Mechelen does this in a collaborative process with local stakeholders, while exchanging on this process with, and inspired by good practices of, the European partners within the CECI project.
Concrete initiatives such as the Climate action subsidies, which focus on the neighborhood approach in fostering circular economy thinking among citizens, have been presented as good practices from the city of Mechelen. As well as how the city wants to set the example by systematically integrating circular principles in the city’s tendering procedures as well as construction works.
The latter was the focus of the next speaker from another Flemish medium-sized city, namely from the city of Roeselare. Roeselare explained how they are building a new town hall according to circular economy principles, focusing on a selective demolition. Construction material that is mined in the old town hall is reused by the city or given to local organizations who give a second life to the construction materials. A similar selective or soft demolition approach is now undertaken in the reconversion of the former library in Mechelen, which will be turned into a housing district in 2022. Making reuse inventories is still pioneer work so Mechelen works together with both real estate developer, architect, and the current users of the former library, such as the citizen climate collective Klimaan to develop a local approach for the reuse of construction materials with a focus on citizen involvement.
This is the way forward, as we learned today from VITO/Energyville’s research that most of the energy - and hence CO2 emission - of the built environment is “grey” or “embodied energy” which is inherent to the use of materials and the transport of those materials, as well the energy that is needed to demolish buildings and send the demolished construction materials to incineration, landfill or even recycling processes, which also consume energy. When European policies and cities and regions are focusing on renovation in their climate action, circular, neighborhood, or citizen-centered approaches to material use, have to be an integral part of the systemic change.
