Building connected, circular cities

Transform cities by unlocking the potential of unutilized resources. The UN projects that by 2050¹, nearly 70% of the world’s population will be living in cities. To equitably sustain this rapid urbanization, cities need to become locally productive, resource-efficient hubs.

Eliminating waste

The current system is broken. Raw materials are mined and shipped globally, costing time and money. Products are then created and dispersed back around the world. With ever-reducing lifespans, these assets then end up in landfills faster year after year. ²

Neighborly exchange

Like borrowing a cup of sugar, relationships between neighbors make it easy to share resources. By enabling instant connections, or nodes, across organizations and neighborhoods, cities create self-sufficient loops of assets, resources, goods, and materials. These loops can intersect and create pathways between nodes to share information and products in an ever connected and circular world.

Connected re-localization

To save money & time, reduce waste, and increase equitable access to needed resources, cities can re-localize their supply chain and product life cycles.³ Connecting people, places, and organizations through the management of their assets, equipment, and resources ensures that the outputs of one organization become the inputs of another.

Why create re-localized, circular exchanges?

Reduce costs to small businesses

An estimated $630 billion in resources sit idle or unused every year. Wide-scale participation in connected networks with access to these resources will empower businesses to find the right product they need at the right time for the right price, reducing their overall operating costs all while combating climate change.

Equitable distribution of available resources

A scalable technology solution that connects small business leaders, entrepreneurs, NGOs, policymakers, and academia to assess material resource flows, a local-to-local marketplace equitably distributes dormant resources to community members, benefiting everyone.

Virtual connectivity across any organization

Connecting organizations within and across industries and markets illuminates innovative ways to repurpose materials and relationships. What drives local-to-local circularity within cities are these unique connections and relationships.

Across organizations, across industries

Cities account for 75% of resource consumption and 50% of global waste production⁴ – a massive opportunity to create local connections and enact circular change. In a connected circular economy, societal and economic transformation can occur from anywhere, with unlikely pairings across industries.

Commit to growth, accessibility, and reuse

There are many different policy levers and over 100 cases from over 70 cities that are available to guide city officials, aldermen, and other government leaders in adopting circular practices.

Rheaply is committed to working with city and municipality leaders with an agenda for city reuse programs and sustainable growth.

Join the Circular City Coalition