CIRCOLINK (Circular Revolution through Collaborative LINKs in Furniture Ecosystems) is a three-year Horizon Europe project that aims to speed up the European furniture sector's transition towards more sustainable, inclusive, and circular production and consumption models.
Every year, more than 10 million metric tons of furniture waste are generated, while less than 2% of products are reused or refurbished. In this context, promoting circular economy models is key to reducing environmental impacts and making the most of materials, skills, and resources throughout the entire product life cycle.
The overall aim of the project is to encourage the European furniture sector to adopt more circular practices. This will be done by developing and validating innovative, replicable and inclusive business models. Specifically, CIRCOLINK aims to:
- Look at how the system works and the skills needed for the circular transition;
- Create and test seven circular business models in different European contexts;
- Encourage people to get involved and start engaging with circular products and services;
- Improve the professional skills needed for an inclusive circular transition;
- Create tools for measuring environmental, economic, and social impacts of circular practices;
- Help to develop public policies that support a circular economy for furniture.
The project will develop and test innovative “SHIFTERs”: concrete circular business model pilots implemented across six countries: Italy, Denmark, Poland, Ireland, Austria and the Czech Republic. These pilots are designed to actively engage manufacturers, social enterprises, and public actors within local furniture ecosystems, creating opportunities for collaboration and shared learning. Beyond their demonstration role, the pilots will provide insights into:
- Barriers, behaviours and dynamics that shape circularity across the ecosystem
- Skills development/re-skilling programmes supporting a just transition by empowering workers and social economy actors to access and generate quality green jobs;
- Empirical basis for the development of an AI-based impact assessment framework
- The design of scalability pathways, enabling the successful transfer to other regions and systemic uptake.
RREUSE will be involved in the project across several work packages, carrying out research on the circular economy furniture ecosystem, assessing training needs and capacity gaps for circular skills, assisting in the set-up of a local SHIFTER for furniture refurbishment, developing targeted support and replication roadmaps as well as policy recommendations and toolkits.
