The Circular Economy in Glasgow, United Kingdom

Executive summary

Drivers of the circular economy in Glasgow

Glasgow aims to be the first circular city in Scotland with a view to meeting carbon neutral goals by 2030. The motivation for doing so is, of course, grounded in addressing environmental challenges but the benefits from the transition also reflect opportunities to tackle demographic and socio-economic challenges.

Glasgow is expected to see its population grow by 4.2% by 2043 and, in response, the City Council has a target of 25 000 new homes by 2025. This presents an opportunity to increase resource efficiency in the building sector and, in particular, to embody net zero carbon targets from the planning phase. These plans can also address challenges related to the types of homes needed too. Single-person households are expected to increase to 45% by 2043. Compared to 2- 4 person households, single-person households consume on average per capita more electricity (between 23% and 77%), more gas (between 38% and 54%) and use close to 50% more land.

In addition, the share of Glasgow’s population living within 500 metres of derelict land is double the average for Scotland (28.4%), which has negative impacts on health, the environment, the economy and social cohesion. Rehabilitating these industrial areas into green spaces, therefore, provides a significant opportunity to improve the quality of life of local communities.

Addressing environmental challenges and transitioning towards carbon-neutrality, leveraging on a circular economy, also provides an important vehicle to boost the economy, create jobs and, in turn, address social challenges. Glasgow is one of the poorest cities in Scotland, with half of its residents (44%) living in the 20% most deprived neighbourhoods.

Opportunities to unlock the potential of the circular economy

The transition towards the circular economy in Glasgow can also build on several of its assets, including digitalisation, tourism and SMEs.

As Scotland’s most technologically advanced city and the second in the UK, Glasgow is well-placed to leverage digitisation to set up material exchange platforms, to track waste for better collection and recycling, to develop open-access tools and applications to engage citizens and raise awareness, and to connect businesses across the value chain.

A major international gateway to Scotland, Glasgow can also leverage opportunities generated by the tourism sector – 2.3 million tourists in 2018 generated GBP 662 million for the local economy – as well as the events industry to engage related industries such as energy, water, waste management, food and transport, in moving towards a more sustainable and low-carbon economy.

Finally, as SMEs prevail in Glasgow’s business fabric, a shift from a linear to a circular economy can capitalise on the ability their size confers to adapt and innovate, to enhance future-proof business innovation and collaborations. There is in particularly strong potential in sectors such as manufacturing, food and beverages, which provided over 117 500 jobs in 2016 (30% of Glasgow’s workforce) and generated over GBP 5.5 billion (27%) of Glasgow’s GDP.

A beneficial partnership model to accelerate the circular transition

Glasgow’s path towards the circular economy is primarily driven by the collaboration between the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, through its Circular Glasgow initiative, Zero Waste Scotland and the Glasgow City Council. Since 2015, this partnership has facilitated several activities, including: exploratory studies to track inflows and outflows of materials in the city to identify consumer footprints; events on the circular economy to raise awareness and facilitate collaborations; and workshops and circular economy platforms to crowdsource ideas, such as the Circle Lab Challenge. In 2019, the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce launched the Circular Glasgow Network, a platform facilitating collaboration across 175 companies from diverse sectors. After five years of accumulated knowledge, practice and experimentation, in 2020, Glasgow City Council presented the Circular Economy Route Map for Glasgow, whose design and implementation were guided by the findings of this OECD report, with the objective of fostering local value chains and jobs while promoting community empowerment.

Governance challenges

Nevertheless, transitioning to a circular economy in Glasgow will require overcoming a number of policy, engagement and capacity gaps. First, there is a need to move from siloes to system thinking within and across municipal departments. Strategic plans and policy frameworks such as the City Development Plan or the Resource and Recycling Strategy 2020-2030 are not yet aligned with the Circular Economy Route Map. Second, residents and large corporations have been largely missing in consultation initiatives so far, which have mainly targeted SMEs. Third, important capacity gaps prevail amongst public officers to adopt efficient green public procurement and circular economy practices due to the mismatch between public officials in charge of drafting tenders and those managing contracts, especially with respect to evaluations of how contracts perform after they have been awarded.

Making the transition happen: policy recommendations

The city of Glasgow can play an important role as promoter, facilitator and enabler of the circular economy through a collective and co‑ordinated approach across stakeholders and levels of government:

To promote the circular economy, the city could:

• Establish a transversal working group across municipal departments and continue to strengthen the relationship between the city, Zero Waste Scotland and the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce;

• Lead by example, embedding circular economy principles in daily municipal activities and practices such as separate waste collection, water reuse and ban on single use plastics;

• Build a circular vision of key sectors with strong potential, especially tourism, the built environment, food and the events industry (e.g. conferences, concerts and festivals);

• Raise awareness of residents and key economic actors through communication campaigns;

• Promote the use of labels and certifications to increase trust.

To facilitate collaboration among a wide range of actors, the city could:

• Align local targets on the circular economy with regional ones for a coordinated vision across levels of government;

• Mainstream circular economy principles across strategic policy documents such as Glasgow’s City Development Plan, the Resource and Recycling Strategy 2020-30, the Liveable Neighbourhood Plan, the Climate Emergency Implementation Plan (CEIP) and the Glasgow Economic Strategy 2016-23;

• Further involve stakeholders in strengthening and consolidating the circular vision of the city;

• Engage property developers and relevant actors in experimentations and pilots to transform deprived neighbourhoods into circular areas, and to take stock of the location, condition and barriers for reuse of existing derelict land.

To enable the necessary governance and economic conditions, the city could:

• Identify regulatory bottlenecks to circular economy practices, such as using secondary materials in new buildings or implementing modular off-site construction models, and initiate a dialogue with the regional government to overcome them, if need be;

• Set incentives for effective implementation of green public procurement with circular economy criteria, while making it accessible to new entrants and SMEs with circular economy activities;

• Explore fiscal tools and funding options to boost the transition to a just circular economy;

• Foster capacity building for the circular economy in all municipal departments, and promote training on circular business models for entrepreneurs and youth;

• Develop an “incubator” to support the creation of new business models and innovations geared towards the circular economy;

• Provide a digital marketplace, matchmaking tools and on line and offline networking platforms to generate collaborations across large companies and SMEs applying circular economy principles;

• Develop digital maps and material flow analyses to understand material input and output;

• Monitor and assess progress on the Circular Economy Route Map.