Circular Copenhagen

All Copenhageners must have the opportunity to act with awareness of resources. We create a framework for a circular lifestyle where waste is not just waste but resources we use again.

Circular Copenhagen is the City of Copenhagen's Resource and Waste Management Plan for 2019-2024. The plan focuses on circular economy and aims to reduce the amount of waste sent for incineration.

Circular Copenhagen has three main objectives:

  • 70% of household and light industrial and commercial waste to be sorted and collected for recycling
  • Tripling reuse
  • 59,000 tons of CO2-reduction

More waste sorting, better opportunities for reuse, innovative collaborations with companies on sorting, reuse, recycling, and new technical solutions are pivotal points in the plan.

Learn more

Expand all

The challenge

Currently, a lot of limited resources are considered waste after usage. They are thus thrown away to be burned and not coming back. Therefore, even more resources must be included in a circular economy, rather than being taken out of circulation. In Copenhagen, we want to be better at reusing and sorting our waste for recycling.

Our approach

We are working to achieve the goals of 70 percent sorting, tripling reuse and 59,000 tons of CO2-reduction through a range of activities such as:

  • Establishment of up to 750 public sorting points
  • Three new local recycling hubs and better reuse facilities at other recycling stations
  • Waste sorting in Copenhagen's citizen-oriented institutions
  • More sorting particularly of food waste and plastics
  • New technological solutions for post-sorting of residual waste

Join us

Expand all

Innovation platform for companies

Will your company be among the circular frontrunners and develop new solutions that push the green transition in Copenhagen and the rest of the world?

The City of Copenhagen only achieves the ambitious objectives of Circular Copenhagen through strong development cooperation with industry and knowledge institutions. Therefore, the municipality has created a so-called "innovation platform", Circular Copenhagen, which will make it easier for technology developers and other innovative actors to get in touch with the municipality's development department and enter into dialogue about the possibilities for cooperation.

Case: Holy Grail 2.0 - the waste sorting of the future

The development project "Holy Grail 2.0" involves more than 100 leading packaging companies across the EU, and the City of Copenhagen plays a key role. The goal is to demonstrate a groundbreaking new way to sort plastic packaging and food and drink cartons, based on digital watermarks. This will allow for a much higher level of detail and quality in recycling.

Read more about the Holy Grail 2.0 project

Case: Growing edible oyster hats on garden waste

In collaboration with the company Beyond Coffee, we demonstrate a method of using garden and park waste as a growing medium for edible oyster mushrooms.

Get in touch

Technology, Development and Resources

Do you want to help develop the solutions for the future?

Visit us on Circular Copenhagen's website