City-region food system initiatives (CRFSIs) are crucial for sustainable urban development, as they bridge the gap between local producers and consumers, adapt and restructure city-regions, and improve urban food security. Although in political and scientific discourses, CRFSIs are generally associated with positive effects across all sustainability dimensions, research has begun to measure their actual impact. While many studies address their environmental and economic impacts, it is widely argued that social impacts are ‘fuzzier’ and more difficult to measure. This paper challenges the notion that social impacts are immeasurable by presenting social indicators and metrics in four social dimensions (education, health, community development and economy). For this purpose, a systematic literature review covering the period 2010–2020 was conducted via the PRISMA method. The analysis of n = 234 papers confirmed that social impacts are measurable through various indicators, including quantitative metrics (e.g., kg, €) and qualitative measures (e.g., Likert scales). Health-related indicators were present in 47 % of all analyzed papers. Across the 597 identified indicators, 249 indicators were health-related, followed by indicators related to education (151), economic aspects (105), and community development (92). This review highlights the strong correlations between these different social impact dimensions. It serves as a valuable resource for quantifying social impacts and enabling researchers to assess social sustainability of CRFSIs in the future.

Textile waste management is an increasingly urgent issue due to textile mass production and consumption, which leads to significant waste generation. Strategies for managing textile waste prioritise reuse and recycling over incineration and landfilling. However, reuse and recycling practices performed in the same territory where textiles are consumed remain limited. Instead, used textiles from high-income countries are often exported to the Global South and low- and middle-income countries, leading to numerous environmental impacts in these regions. This study examines the value chain of imported used textiles in the Tarapacá and Santiago Metropolitan Regions of Chile. The results help propose a new methodological framework for environmentally assessing used textile trade practices in importing countries. The study employs a rapid-ethnography and qualitative mixed-method approach, including interactive shadowing and observation, conducted across eight locations. The findings reveal that used textiles enter the country first via ports and then are distributed within importer companies and second-hand retailers. There are initiatives for reuse, recycling, and downcycling, but the findings show that not all imported used textiles are effectively utilized. A portion of used textiles ends up as waste in dumpsites, exacerbating environmental impacts. The study recommends a qualitative and quantitative mixed-method approach to address data gaps and develop more exhaustive studies in importing countries. Future research should focus on quality standards to improve sorting, exporting criteria, and traceability of used textiles. This will enhance trade flow accounting and mitigate environmental impacts in importing countries, especially those from unsorted and low-quality used textiles.

Existing assessments of Urban Circular Economy (UCE) initiatives often fail to address the multidimensional nature of urban circularity, particularly regarding social inclusion and stakeholder engagement. To address these limitations this research develops a unified theoretical framework by integrating three existing frameworks, the 9 DB framework (for identifying the development stage of waste and resource management), the 10R ladder (for defining the depth of adopted circular strategies), and the inclusive circular city (ICC) framework (for assessing environmental, social, economic and spatial dimensions, including participatory engagement). The unified framework is applied to the network of Circular Craft Centres (CCCs) in the Netherlands, a bottom-up initiative launched in 2019. The application of the framework reveals that the CCC network promotes the long-term circulation of materials, including textiles, furniture, electronics and plastics, through multi-stakeholder collaboration involving governments, organizations, businesses, citizens and vulnerable groups, with a focus on labour market integration. It also shows that CCCs have the potential to foster sustainability, circularity, and inclusion while underscoring the importance of place-based policies, the diversity of circular strategies implemented, and the active involvement of stakeholders across ICC dimensions. This study contributes to the development of holistic theoretical frameworks for evaluating UCE initiatives and supporting inclusive urban circular transitions.

An ecological metaphor can enable transitions towards regenerative circular economies. Yet, this potential remains latent because its conceptual development, which is a prerequisite for its practical operationalization, is in its incipient phase and largely vague. To strengthen its epistemological underpinning, we propose a forward-looking interdisciplinary research agenda which brings together theories, ontological positions, analytical approaches, and strategies of action from ecological economics, panarchy theory, socio-metabolic research, process ecology, environ network theory, the constructal law, nature-based solutions, complexity economics, doughnut economics, regenerative economics, and ergodicity economics. The agenda facilitates the concentration, consolidation, and acceleration of theoretical and methodological innovation for the generation and accumulation of a diverse yet coherent body of knowledge on the interpretation of the process of regeneration and for illuminating the ways in which regenerative circular economies may function.

With the latest IPCC report, dramatic global climate action must be taken immediately to limit global warming to 1.5 °C, or face more frequent and extreme weather events with catastrophic implications. Cities must invest in climate resilience development; however, government policies are only effective if they are supported by the society in which they serve. As such, this study aims to characterize the social perception of climate resilience development, in particular the implementation of sustainable urban rooftop strategies, to support policy makers and enable individual action. This was accomplished through the analysis of 1,100 answered surveys in Cerdanyola del Vallès (Spain), to assess one’s willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to implement (WTI) rooftop strategies according to: 1. socio-demographical characteristics; 2. social perceptions and beliefs; and 3. surrounding land use and land cover, and vulnerabilities identified through temperature and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) maps. The results of this study found age played a significant role in predictability, with 18-39-year-olds being the most willing to pay and implement the various rooftop scenarios. However, our results uncovered societal inequality as those 85+ were the second group most interested in rooftop agriculture but the most financially restricted. Belief in the viability of rooftop strategies increased respondents WTP and WTI while having access to ones’ rooftop increased willingness to partake in rooftop food cultivation and enhance rooftop greenery. A new finding presented by this study is the quantifiable impact that urban greenery plays on increasing survey respondents WTP and WTI.

Cities face the challenges of supplying food and managing organic municipal solid waste (OMSW) sustainably amid increasing urbanization rates. Urban agriculture (UA) can help with this effort by producing local crops that are fertilized with nutrients recovered from compost generated from OMSW. This research aims to determine the potential of OMSW compost to supply the nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium (NPK) demand of UA and the environmental benefits of replacing mineral fertilizer from a life cycle perspective. The Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB) serves as the case study given its commitment to reuse biowaste according to the Revised Waste Framework Directive and to promote UA as a signing member of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact. Based on crop requirements and farmer surveys, we find that the annual NPK demands of the agricultural fields of the AMB that cover 5,500 ha and produce 70,000 tons of crops are approximately 769, 113, and 592 tons of NPK, respectively. Spatial material flow analysis and life cycle assessment were applied to found that the current waste management system can potentially substitute 8 % of the total NPK demanded by UA with compost, reduce the impacts by up to 39 % and yield savings in global warming of 130 %. The more ambitious future scenario of 2025 can potentially substitute 21 % of the total NPK demand and reduce environmental impacts up to 1,049 %, depending on the category considered. Avoiding processing of mixed OMSW, mineral fertilizer replacement and cogeneration of electricity from biogas are the major contributors to these environmental savings.

Although the number of studies assessing the textile sector is increasing, only a few focus on its waste management. This study aims to shed light on current textile waste disposal practices and account for their environmental impact. To do so, a combination of citizen surveying and environmental quantitative tools, such as material flow analysis and life cycle assessment, are used to assess municipal textile waste in Catalonia in 2020. The results show that only approximately 10 % of municipal textile waste is separately collected, while 90 % is landfilled/incinerated. Of the 10 % of textiles collected separately, almost 40 % are prepared for reuse and recycled in Catalonia and Spain, approximately 40 % are exported for reuse and recycling in Asia, Africa and the rest of Europe, and the remaining 20 % are incinerated or landfilled, stocked or treated as improper waste. The carbon footprint generated by 1 t of textile waste managed by unseparated collection is 353 kg CO₂ eq, which almost double that of 1 t of textile waste collected separately: 207 kg CO₂ eq. The results also show that the emissions of textiles collected separately could be considerably reduced by minimizing their exports. The conclusions indicate that a proper course of action includes raising awareness about textile waste management and secondhand buying habits among citizens while investing in better sorting and local recycling technologies to reduce exports. Identifying the existing limitations to creating a local reuse and recycling textile sector is crucial to reduce its carbon footprint.

The inclusion of the informal recycling sector (IRS) in a circular economy (CE) is challenging and it is gaining increasing attention by the academic community in an exponential yet fragmented way. In this narrative review, we demarcate the direct and indirect contributions of the IRS to various domains of the CE by drawing knowledge from relevant literature. First, we capture the modi operandi of different forms of recycling value chains into a typology. We do so based on distinct foci and policy approaches towards the IRS which have been adopted across different countries. Second, we synthesize various threads of information on reported forms of collaboration, tensions, and challenges in the context of urban waste management, into a conceptual framework to facilitate transitions towards circular and inclusive wise-waste systems. Finally, we discuss important aspects related to circular business models and integration approaches towards the IRS, and we propose avenues for further research.