Promoting the Circular Economy for Water and Sanitation

Concerns over growing resources scarcity and insecurity are pushing the circular economy approach - not only for water, but also in its nexus with energy and materials from wastewater. A circular economy is the logical solution for a resource-constrained world, where - in contrast to the commonly used linear take-use-discharge approach – everything is fed back as a valuable resource towards a closed loop. Applying circular economy principles can help addressing global challenges, such as water scarcity, missing sanitation facilities, and degrading ecosystems - while at the same time generating financial income to support water and sanitation service provision and creating business opportunities for various actors along the water and sanitation value chains.

Facing the challenges of resource scarcity, the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC) commissioned adelphi to develop a new programme on circular economy for water and sanitation. SDC sees the urgency to build the case for circular economy, especially in growing emerging economies and wishes to take up a cross-sectoral systems approach and build up strong partnerships around the topic. The new SDC programme aims at supporting different projects and sets of partners, under the objective to enhance water security and value creation, while at the same time conserving the environment. This shall be the basis to provide sustainable access to water and sanitation services to all.

A global transition to a circular economy

adelphi supported and advised the SDC’s Global Programme Water (GPW) in the development of the new programme, therefore conducted an intensive scoping analysis, highlighting key trends and challenges as well as opportunities in the field of circular economy for water and sanitation. The scoping identified innovative and promising approaches with potential for scaling-up. The analysis followed a cross-sectoral approach focussing on approaches that foster a climate resilient and low emissions water economy. 

Based on this study, adelphi identified different entry points – including technologies, implementation partners and governance approaches – in different world regions. Entry points include industrial- and community symbiosis, circular economy in utilities and developing global standards and guidelines for implementation and monitoring of sanitation-based products. adelphi further sketched out two intervention proposals in more detail for introducing circularity into urban water cycles through the adoption of the water wise cities concept, introducing innovative urban agriculture mechanisms, and supporting multidisciplinary (research and) design processes that aim to develop innovative urban projects that use water for building urban resilience.