Resources, conservation & recycling advances circular economy in Andalusia: A review of public and non-governmental initiatives

This paper analyses the status quo of the circular economy in Andalusia with the special focus on public and non-governmental initiatives in the field. Regional authorities have undertaken a number of actions in order to stimulate public-private collaboration and implementation of projects that can benefit from the EU funding aiming to accelerate the transformation of Andalusian economy and to make it more circular and less carbon intensive. While the private enterprises in the region focus mainly on recovery of agricultural and food waste, the citizen initiatives target primarily the reduction of residential waste, promoting the reutilization of furniture, home appliances and closing.

Unfortunately, the initiatives of Andalusian authorities often lack harmonization with both the EU and Spanish strategies in the field. The main documents that govern the development of circular economy in the region frequently set imprecise qualitative goals, rather than binding quantitative targets to be achieved within a certain period of time. As a corollary, there is a poor coordination among the public administration, business sector and the society and insufficient provision of public funding for circular projects.

We, therefore, recommend Andalusian government to build up the framework of regulatory, fiscal and economic tools that can incentivize the circular economy and to increase transparency, monitoring, reporting, and recognition of progress. It is essential to introduce both the rewarding and penalization schemes that enable behavioral changes of producers and consumers, to set the concrete numerical goals and to harmonize the main programs with the Spanish and the EU strategies in the field of circular economy.