Boosting the circular economy amongst SMEs in Europe

The European Commission invites: SME support organisations, green solution providers and regional authorities in the European Union to put themselves forward if they are interested in participating in a pilot project providing them respectively with training, support and policy advice regarding resource efficiency, eco-innovation and circular economy – delivered by: KPMG, Ecofys, CSR Netherlands and Circle Economy.

We offer:

Capacity building for SME support organisations:

For more information and the application form, please visit:

Capacity building for SME support organisations

Support to providers of circular solutions in the scale-up of their solutions:

For more information and the application form, please visit:

Support for providers of circular solutions

Policy advice from external consultants to regional authorities:

For more information and the application form, please visit:

Policy advice for regional authorities

Closing date for submission: 18^th of September 2017. The European Commission will then select the most suitable applicants.

If you have any further question please write to ENV-PILOT-PROJECT@ec.europa.eu

Background:

The European Commission has adopted an ambitious new Circular Economy Package to help European businesses and consumers to make the transition to a stronger and more circular economy where resources are used in a more sustainable way. With this plan to make Europe’s economy cleaner and more competitive, the Commission is delivering ambitious measures to cut resource use, reduce waste and boost sustainable production and consumption.

Since adopting the Circular Economy Package the Commission has observed an increased uptake by corporations to adopt resource efficiency, eco-innovation and/or circular economy strategies and practices.

The Commission observes that SMEs are experiencing more difficulties in adopting such strategies and practices, due to:

• their more limited organisational, technological and financial capacity;
• and less access to (pre-) financing for circular solutions.

With this project the Commission aims to bring assets (e.g. knowledge, networks and tools) via the right support infrastructure, organisations and associations to SMEs so that these enterprises can start to benefit from the advantages of the circular economy including cost reductions, new/increased revenue streams and improved environmental performance.