Open Call: Are You a Frontrunner in the Circular Economy?

After one year of managing of The Circular Building Coalition (CBC), it has become clear that many circular economy solutions exist while most have not reached their full market potential. The majority of circular economy innovations have been developed and tested within closed or limited environments and thus have not yet been diffused across the sector for the public good. However, since launching the first CBC Open Call for Blueprint Projects in 2023, various sources of insight have pointed to the support of Blueprint Projects as a key to address these challenges.

To support circular solutions and innovation with circular economy in the built environment CBC has launched the Open Call 2025.  

Winners of the Open Call 2025 will receive up to €70,000 in funding, as well as network and market access support, and the deadline is May 2025, at 23:59 CET. 

The Open Call 2025 supports circular innovators to: 

• Identify promising approaches and solutions to identified challenge areas that have been proven to be feasible. 
• Demonstrate market demand and demystify assumed barriers for circular solutions. 
• Support the real-world demonstration and diffusion of scalable approaches and solutions across the built environment sector for the wider public good. 
• Showcase inspiring examples of new approaches to creating change in the built environment to influence the industry to develop and diffuse such approaches. 

The open call engages with three main challenge areas within the circular economy. CBC is opting for applicants with projects addressing one or several of the following: 

• Challenge Area 1: Demonstrate assurance on the quality and reliability secondary materials 
• Challenge Area 2: Showcase the value of reused and secondary materials 
• Challenge Area 3: Unlock data and information flows across the value chain to enable circularity 

If you think this could be something of interest to you or someone you know, don't hesitate to get in touch via email: info@circularbuildingscoalition.org, or check out our website: https://www.circularbuildingscoalition.org/ , and the applicants guide document: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15gFDfafnZ8kg2MjKvW8tWa_w1kXvoRxP/view 

Smith Innovation is overall program manager for CBC. This is a partnership between six international organisations who share the aim of wanting to accelerate the deployment of circular economy solutions, particularly in the built environment. CBC has previously supported 6 blueprint projects by innovators who are front-runners in the circular cconomy.