| The Mannheim Message, a call to involve local governments as real dialogue partners for policy development, has been formally presented to the European Commission during the second day of the 9th European Conference on Sustainable Cities & Towns - Mannheim2020.

| Major cities including Budapest, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Oslo, Prague and Tirana have signed the European Circular Cities Declaration, recognising the need of accelerating the transition from a linear to a circular economy in Europe.

| BSI, in its role as the UK National Standards Body, publishes the first standard for measuring the biodegradability of polyolefins. 

| Team Stainless has published ‘The Global Life Cycle of Stainless Steels’, a summary of the results of a study which quantifies the stocks and flows cycle of stainless steels.

| Finnish street maintenance technology developer Trombia Technologies has launched the world’s first full-power autonomous street sweeper.

| Growing environmental and labour concerns in the global ship breaking industry present a desperate need for green compliant ship recycling facilities.

| Several speakers stressed the need to invest now into the Circular Economy, during the European Aluminium web workshop on investing in better collection and sorting of used aluminium packaging for recycling.

| Liebherr launches a new machine on the global market: As a successor to the R 944 C, the R 940 Demolition complements the product range, which already includes the R 950 Demolition and the R 960 Demolition.

| OWS will open a laboratory in Dayton, Ohio in spring 2021 to meet rapidly growing demand for biodegradation and compostability testing services.

| Four polystyrene producers and recyclers have initiated a Non-Disclosure Agreement to explore and optimize advanced recycling technologies for polystyrene, such as depolymerization. The agreement is intended accelerate steps by the industry to reduce plastic waste by creating a more circular economy for polystyrene.

| The position of the the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries opposes bans and fees on the valuable resource. was developed in response to several high-profile municipalities either banning or placing fees on paper bags.

| IRODDI is a new BBI JU project in the area of circular bioeconomy aimed to take advantage of the residual streams of oils and fats refining to produce bio-based products in a more sustainable way.

| Amcor and Nestlé are announcing a breakthrough in recyclable packaging, aiming to improve the environmental footprint of consumer packaging up to 60%, starting with wet cat food.

| Blendhub's business model has been selected because it tackles the issue of food waste by enabling smarter nutritional supply chains and local production and distribution of food.

| Mayors and decision-makers around Europe commit to co-create and implement the European Green Deal together with national governments and the European Union. Cities, regions, organisations and individuals are welcome to endorse the Mannheim Message, a call to involve local governments as real dialogue partners for policy development.