From policy to practice: Business innovation and local action
An online peer learning session with speakers from Albania, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Greece, Italy, and Slovenia took place last December 9th. It explored how climate policies, local actions, and global/EU mechanisms, such as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), are not only regulatory obligations, but strategic tools that help businesses grow, innovate, and stay competitive in a rapidly changing economy. The aim was to show that the green transition is not just about compliance; it is about opportunity, competitiveness, and future-proofing.
Here’s a few takes from the discussions:
1. Beyond compliance: Turning climate planning and the green transition into a business opportunity – Aldin Medjedovic, project manager at United Nations Development Programme, BiH
Aldin Medjedovic framed climate action as an economic transformation that is reshaping industries, markets, and investment flows:
- New standards and technologies are creating “winners and losers”, with early movers gaining lower costs, access to new markets, and closer alignment with policies shaping Europe’s economic direction.
- Sustainability is not inherently expensive, inefficiency is often the biggest cost burden, amid rising energy prices, growing demand for sustainable products, and increasing investor requirements for climate data.
- As sustainability becomes a baseline for doing business, non-compliance leads to penalties and lost competitiveness.
- CBAM is a major shift for exporters to the EU, requiring credible emissions data and pushing companies to reduce carbon intensity to retain market access. CBAM is a catalyst for modernisation, rewarding innovation through efficiency upgrades, cleaner inputs, and low-carbon products that can reach premium markets.
Lessons learned: Compliance is only the starting point; the goal is competitive advantage. NDCs, central to the Paris framework, increasingly function as a development and investment strategy (and not only as an emissions document). NDCs signal where future regulation and finance will go, shape standards across sectors and unlock access to climate finance. Businesses can use NDCs to map regulatory risks, position products and services, and form partnerships.
2. Library of Things: connecting policy, people and local business – Jošt Derlink, head of the Library of Things, Slovenia
For nine years, Jošt Derlink has been a manager of the Library of Things Ljubljana, a non-profit “rental shop”/public service where people borrow items they only need occasionally (e.g., electric tools, projectors, food dehydrators).
- The operating model of such a service is that users become either members (like in a classic library) or pay a small fee per item, supported by an online catalogue with availability and reservation options.
- Staffing is lean (with limited opening hours aligned with citizens’ schedules), and the small team is paid mainly through grants and project funds, plus income from advising municipalities to set up new libraries; volunteers play a smaller role.
- Building on the idea that sharing must be easy to use, the initiative expanded into a repair café (since 2024) focused on electrical/electronic appliances, responding to the shrinking and fragmented repair market. The repair café quickly scaled in demand (repairing over 400 appliances in two years) and now fills up without much promotion.
- City of Ljubljana’s circular strategy explicitly recognises the Library of Things as a good practice and supports network expansion, developed through stakeholder focus groups. Cities can help by providing space, mapping host institutions, and amplifying communication, often just as valuable as direct financing.
Lessons learned: Greener habits spread faster when they are practical, accessible, and personally beneficial (saving users money, space, and time), and not only “morally right.” Make sustainable behavior as convenient as mainstream consumerism (catalogue, reservations, good location, user-friendly rules); personal benefit is the entry point; broader environmental impact follows. Scaling works best through institutions already trusted by communities (public libraries, youth centres, reuse centres). Municipalities can enable replication through space, visibility, and coordination—even without large budgets.
3. The experience of DISMECO and the project PHOENIX.WEE – Eugenio Tedeschi, Commercial and operations director at DISMECO, Italy
Eugenio Tedeschi presented the LIFE PHOENIX-WEEE project as a concrete example of how preparation of EEE (e.g., disposed washing machines) for reuse can be organised at industrial scale, not only as a niche repair activity. He highlighted that the current European WEEE system still structurally favours recycling over reuse, due to the lack of binding targets, incentives, and consistent traceability for reuse.
- Scaling repair and reuse requires a full integrated value chain linking regulation, operations, skills, and markets. The model combines targeted collection (via resellers or weekly collection points), diagnosis, selective separation, a repair academy, structured local donation pathways, spare-parts storage, and pilot sales of refurbished goods through physical and online channels, alongside improved sorting to recover higher-value secondary materials.
- Reuse can be immediately profitable when quality assurance and certification are embedded and market uptake is planned (e.g. a target of 5,500 repaired washing machines per year, sold as certified refurbished products at about half the price of new). Reuse represents around 10% of operations, with the remaining waste treated conventionally.
- The business case is strengthened by placing refurbished products in mainstream sales channels, including large retail networks, and by positioning quality and certification as essential for consumer trust and repeat demand.
- Business innovation must be matched by enabling governance. The EU WEEE framework still prioritises recycling and lacks strong obligations, incentives, traceability systems, binding reuse targets, or a real Right to Reuse, limiting investment and large-scale replication.
Lessons learned: Preparation for reuse does not scale through ad-hoc repairs alone. It requires an integrated value chain – from targeted collection and diagnosis to organised repair, selective separation, and credible sales channels – combined with policy support for a right to reuse, measurable targets, harmonised quality and traceability standards, and economic mechanisms that make reuse facilities viable and replicable.
4. How can we support local SMEs in the circular economy? – Abana Laknori, General Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in Tirana, Albania
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Tirana (CCIT) is a practical bridge between EU-alignment goals and what companies can realistically implement on the ground. CCIT’s core role is business representation and support. CCIT actively identifies business needs and challenges related to switching toward the Green Deal and then responds with capacity-building measures (training and advisory support).
- CCIT runs a dedicated training function (established in 2009) offering professional courses selected according to business needs, and it provides certificates for participation. Albanian SMEs must quickly modernise through green transition and digitalisation as the country aligns its framework with EU accession requirements. This alignment is not abstract: it affects everyday business conditions such as transport and trade procedures (import/export/transit).
- From a circular economy and repair/reuse perspective, Albania’s recycling and resource-recovery sector is still developing and not yet using its full productive potential (only 30–40 % utilisation). Much of the sector’s output is export-oriented.
- CCIT strengthens the sector through advocacy and coordination with public institutions, and through promoting public–private partnership models for waste collection and recycling where appropriate, especially relevant for local governments that need workable service models and investment capacity. CCIT represents around 60 recycling enterprises that directly employ 3000 workers and indirectly through network 40.000 self-employed individuals.
Lessons learned: Circular business models (repair, reuse, recycling, remanufacturing) will not scale through enterprise effort alone: they need (local) policy incentives and predictable rules that reward circular practices, plus intermediary organisations that translate these requirements into hands-on support for SMEs.
5. Reuse centres run by the Waste Management Agency of the Region of Western Macedonia – Evgenia Karapatsiou, Environmental Scientist MSc at DIADYMA S.A., Greece
The Waste Management Agency of the Region of Western Macedonia has embedded reuse centres into a wider regional Integrated Waste Management System (IWMS), showing a practical pathway from policy targets to everyday, citizen-facing services.
- Reuse centres are not isolated “good practice corners”, but an integral part of the system, alongside regional facilities such as the Mechanical & Biological Treatment plant with recycling separation and organic composting.
- DIADYMA’s experience shows how regions can start with pilots and scale gradually: following major system milestones (dumpsite restoration, source separation, packaging recycling), reuse centres opened in Kastoria and Florina (2020), expanded to Grevena (2022), and further municipalities in 2024 (including Amyntaio, Siatista, and Servia).
- This phased rollout highlights that durability comes when municipalities co-own the model, services are easily accessible, and reuse is framed as a free, everyday public service. Reuse delivers social (access to goods, support for vulnerable groups), environmental (reduced waste and landfilling), and economic benefits (jobs and household savings), complemented by visible repair and upcycling activities.
- Measurement and transparency underpin credibility and learning, with shared data on donated and reused items and waste diverted, supporting decision-making and replication through EU projects, municipal cooperation, and communication channels.
Lessons learned: Reuse scales when institutionalised through intermunicipal governance, clear roles, and a network approach aligned with territorial realities. Communicating co-benefits is as important as operations. Effective repair hubs combine service delivery with education and community engagement, use simple metrics to demonstrate impact, and build partnerships that make reuse a regionally supported pathway rather than an add-on to recycling.
