economic factor, and at the same time plays a central role in climate and resource protection. With the project "Circular.Care.Solingen", the City of Solingen is providing an important incentive to further develop the circular economy, modern waste management, and sustainable procurement in the healthcare sector. The project is being implemented by the city of Solingen in cooperation with the Municipal Hospital Solingen and the Wuppertal Institute, initially in the hospital; subsequently, all interested institutions within Solingen's healthcare system are invited to participate.
The aim of the project is to establish circular principles such as waste prevention, reuse and intensified use phases and resource-efficient waste management at the Municipal Hospital Solingen and within the broader healthcare system in Solingen, to anchor these in structures, and to make them transferable to other institutions. In doing so, resource consumption and emissions are to be reduced, processes improved, and new cooperation models along the value chain initiated.
The work packages are:
- Analysis phase: Status quo on framework conditions, material flows, procurement and waste management in the hospital as well as mapping of Solingen's healthcare system; derivation and prioritisation of potentials in a baseline paper
- Pilot projects in the hospital: Co-design and implementation of pilot projects on circular procurement and circular waste management including controlling/further development; derivation of recommendations for action and implementation strategies
- Transfer into Solingen's healthcare system: Establishment of cooperations, dialogue formats and joint initiatives; preparation of the findings into an action guide
- Activation and awareness-raising: Internal and external communication (including formats in the hospital, municipal channels, professional public) as well as impact evaluation
- Project management: Coordination, quality assurance and reporting.
The Wuppertal Institute is particularly responsible for the analysis phase, the development of KPIs/data bases, the systematic derivation of potentials, as well as the scientific support and evaluation of the real-world laboratory piloting. In this way, the Institute ensures that robust, transferable transformation knowledge emerges from practical interventions.
As a three-year project, Circular.Care.Solingen is supported within the framework of the EFRE/JTF programme NRW 2021–2027 "CircularCities.NRW" by EU funds and funding from the Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Transport of North Rhine-Westphalia.