During the 28th, 29th and 30th October, the Kick-off Meeting of CityLoops project took place in Roskilde, Denmark. The first day, a Mayors´ Declaration was signed by Municipality of Høje-Taastrup, Municipality of Roskilde, Municipality of Seville, Municipality of Mikkeli, Capital Regional of Denmark and Vallès Occidental Regional Council. On 28th and 29th October, the whole Consortium was joined in order to set the project structure, management mechanisms, and show the activities of the different Work Packages in detail. The Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), European Commission, was joined to the event and identified what is expected by CityLoops. Enhance cities’ capacity to implement Circular Economy (CE) solutions; Support implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Urban Agenda; Measurable reduction in material and resource use; and collaborate with the other three projects on this call i.e., REFLOW, CIRCuIT, and Pop-Machina were some of the main expected outputs identified.

After a short presentation of the designed demonstration actions, a detailed presentation of each work package and activity was done. Special attention had the presentation of Work Package 2 and Work Package 3 which will develop the tools and demonstration actions in the cities involved in CityLoops i.e., Apeldoorn (Netherlands), Bodo (Norway), Copenhaguen Region, especially Hoje-Taastrup and Roskilde (Denmark), Mikkeli (Finland), Porto (Portugal) and Seville (Spain). The Consortium was split into two groups in order to set the baseline of the different demonstration actions, timeline, and potential synergies between the designed tools in each city.

The local consortium of Seville is composed by the Municipality of Seville, Municipal waste management public company LIPASAM, Wastewater management public company EMASESA and IDENER. The Demonstration Manager i.e., Santiago Rodríguez (IDENER) and Evaluation Manager i.e., Tamara Hodas (Municipality of Seville) are the contact points to coordinate the demonstration actions which will be carried out in Seville under the Project Coordinator i.e., Simon Clement (ICLEI). In the Kick-off Meeting, IDENER showed the IT software tools which will develop in order to optimise the mater flows of the Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) and Organic Waste from Municipal Solid Waste as well as the wellbeing monitoring tool and City Simulation platform. Those tools will be used by Municipality of Seville, LIPASAM and EMASESA in order to optimise the management and valorisation of both waste streams. Additionally, those tools will be used to provide guidelines to improve the development model, optimal soil use, and public procurement.

The local consortium of Seville aims to optimise the circulation of CDW minimizing the associated carbon footprint, create a new market for these products in order to facilitate access to demand, establish usage standards that locally allow these products to compete with existing ones, and measure the final impact of these strategies in the welfare of the citizens of our city. Also, the local consortium of Seville contemplates the optimization of the selective collection of the organic fraction of household already ongoing and the implementation of new routes in the city. Additionally, the energy recovery of this organic fraction as a co-substrate in anaerobic digestion in wastewater treatment plants will be tested.