Circular materials management within the city organisation
How does Ghent stimulate and increase a circular economy within its own organisation? Let’s take a look behind the scenes.
The past few years, the City of Ghent set up a large number of circular projects within its own organisation. Why? Because Ghent wants to play a pioneering role in this field. The city aims to produce less waste and reduce CO2 emissions through a smarter use of materials. It’s not always noticeable, but the city takes a lot of behind-the-scenes initiatives relating to circular material management.
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This is what Ghent does behind the scenes
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Circular social employment
The social economy has a lot of potential as regards circular economy and circular material management. A case in point is the Services Company for Social Economy
The Services Company for Social Economy (DBSE: Dienstenbedrijf Sociale Economie) offers support and employment opportunities to people who are not immediately qualified to work at a regular company. Every year, the social employment workplace supports 400 people through personalised coaching.
From waste to new products
The DBSE mainly focuses on the collection and processing of secondary raw materials: residual flows from its own production processes as well as waste from other departments (textile, wood). This waste is used to make new products through remanufacturing and upcycling. For instance, waste wood from the Parks & Gardens Department was given a new life and use to make a lamp.
Circular products as a social win
The DBSE also carries out research as to how the development of circular products can be a social win. Not only does this benefit the environment, it’s also a way for the DBSE to offer more opportunities to gain work experience through social employment. The employees have more possibilities to develop their talents and the variation in training sessions improves. They acquire more technical skills, thus improving their chances of employment. A win-win situation!
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Sustainable work clothes
Sustainable work clothes, what does it mean? The City of Ghent intends to realise a number of ambitions with the help of a toolbox.
The Toolbox for socially responsible work clothes gave rise to a pilot purchase order for work clothes and linen within the organisation. This pilot order included certain conditions for the purchase of sustainable work clothes, for instance:
- Add polyester to reduce wear (less shrinkage and increased colour fastness) and increase the life span of clothing.
- It’s important to take into account the possibility of recycling the clothing as early as in the design phase.
- All materials are to meet the OEKO-TEX Standard 100 or equivalent. Cotton has to be organic and fair trade.
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Circular waste management
A large organisation generates a lot of waste. The City of Ghent tries to reduce its internal waste production and has entered into a partnership with Ivago for that purpose.
According to the coalition agreement, circular economy should contribute to waste reduction, and that’s why Ghent investigated the internal waste management of its own organisation. An analysis was carried out to gain insight into the current situation and launch improvement actions on the basis of the results.
The ambition? Develop a strategy to reduce waste production in the city’s own operations.
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Circular construction
The City of Ghent uses a sustainability meter in order to change its way of thinking, designing and building.
Cities of the future adopt a circular construction strategy. This requires a change in their way of thinking, designing and building. The City of Ghent participates in a number of pilot projects in order to obtain knowledge about circular construction.
- Within the scope of the URBCON pilot project, we try to find out how circular concrete can be introduced in the building industry. For that purpose we are building an evacuation staircase in the school "De Zonnewijzer".
- The Gentbrugge Service Centre (De Felix) is a pilot project within the scope of the Green Deal on Circular Construction of Vlaanderen Circulair.
The sustainability meter
In addition to acquiring experience via pilot projects, the City of Ghent intends to use the sustainability meter GRO in future building projects. This meter accords a global performance level to a (future) building on the basis of the building’s score for 26 different sustainability criteria, with the purpose of constructing future-oriented, liveable buildings.
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Sustainable school meals
Ghent combats food waste at schools and staff restaurants. The meals served are more plant-based and are made with local ingredients.
The city has been focusing on the sustainability of meals within its organisation and schools for a long time. To that end, we have concentrated on organic, fair-trade, short-chain and seasonal products as well as less animal proteins.
Less animal proteins, less waste
In the next years, we will continue to invest in sustainability. We need a further decrease in the consumption of animal proteins in order to achieve the climate objectives. The City opts for an ambitious policy in the field of protein transition and wants to enhance its own exemplary role and purchasing policy. We want to make school and staff meals and catering at events more local and plant-based. Food wastage and animal welfare are also taken into consideration.
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Coffee grounds
How can a waste product like coffee grounds be processed and used as a raw material in a sustainable manner?
Within the municipal organisation, coffee grounds are a waste product that cannot be avoided. The City intends to contribute to the sustainable processing of this waste product so as to use it again as a raw material for the production of soap, for instance.
This project finds its roots in the Urban Biorefinery Project of GLIMPS.bio. Its purpose is to find new solutions for biomass waste in Ghent, like coffee grounds. The City of Ghent participates in the exploration of potential new business models for this coffee grounds chain.
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Reuse of furniture
The new internal second-hand web shop of the City of Ghent encourages the reuse and sharing of goods.
The City’s logistics department takes care of the transport of the items and also manages the municipal organisation’s central warehouse.
The ambitions include:
- Facilitating the reuse of furniture and other products.
- Avoiding unnecessary transport
- Extending the life span of items and goods.
- Reusing second-hand items as much as possible in order to avoid new purchases.
Web shop
One of the ways to encourage and increase the reuse and sharing of goods in the Ghent municipal organisation is launching a web shop. The shop will enable the website users to consult and reserve available items, thus avoiding new purchases and reusing products that are still in good condition. In addition, items that can no longer be used in our organisation can be sold or donated to third parties.
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Circular ICT
ICT devices have a major impact on the environment and the climate. How can we make our municipal ICT policy more sustainable?
The City of Ghent employs 12,000 people, accounting for approximately 9,000 laptops, 3,000 PCs, 3,800 smartphones, 3,000 scanners and printers, 2,500 tablets and more than 700 physical servers. This is a lot of ICT devices, each of which has an impact on the environment, the climate and the working conditions.
The City has already taken several steps toward more sustainable ICT, e.g. repair and sharing initiatives, sustainable criteria for public procurement and membership of Electronics Watch, an international organisation that dedicates itself to improving the working conditions in the production process of electronics. In 2021 District09, the City’s ICT partner, received the Fair ICT Award.
Concrete ambitions
The City continues its pursuit of a circular and more sustainable ICT policy and has several concrete ambitions:
- Imposing criteria on suppliers in order to limit the environmental impact of the production phase.
- Finding the proper balance between improved energy efficiency and extension of the life span.
- Reducing transport and therefore CO2 emissions by solving problems remotely.
- Setting up an improvement journey for the automatic deactivation of servers in order to save energy.
Charter against planned obsolescence
On 7 July 2022 the City and PSWC Ghent signed the 'Ctrl-Alt-Del’ charter of Catapa. By signing the Ctrl-Alt-Del Charter, Ghent supports fairer trade in the ICT sector: longer use of computers, repair of laptops and purchase of more sustainable models, no laptops and smartphones designed to become obsolete quickly.
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Circular greenery
The City of Ghent intends to avoid or reuse green waste or offer it locally for reuse by means of a more sustainable green space management.
How can cities make their green space management more sustainable? The organisation’s green space and nature policy has been looked at closely in order to roll out a sustainable management plan. A few focal points:
- Analysing and mapping the different green flows.
- Finding ways to reduce green waste, for instance by mowing less.
- Reusing green waste, e.g. branches and leaves in the form of wood chips and mulch, or offering it locally for reuse.
- More knowledge sharing within the City.
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The circular experimental garden
The circular experimental garden is part of the circular material management project of the Facility Management department of the City of Ghent. The project is a result of the circular ambitions of the 2019-2024 coalition agreement: ‘Ambition and audacity for Ghent’. As also mentioned in the 2020-2025 climate plan, circular material management is a major challenge.
The City shares its knowledge collected and lessons learned from these projects to inspire other organisations to get to work as well.