Circular Economy

Circular economy: Sectors and Projects

Anticipating future shortages and price increases, the use of natural primary resources will become increasingly costly for railway companies and potentially disruptive to traditional business models. Developing capacity in Circular economy is essential for a sustainable future of rail transport.

Circular economy Sector

The Circular Economy Sector has been set up to help find ways to integrate the principles of the circular economy into the way railways are designed, built, maintained and operated.

Gathering seasoned sustainability and circularity experts from UIC member railway undertakings and infrastructure managers, the Sector aims to share information and foster collaborative knowledge exchanges on how to improve material and resource management and reduce the environmental impact of industrial railway activities by reducing waste and pollution.

Since its creation, the CE Sector has explored circular design, nature-based solutions, reuse, and collaboration. It has been discussing circularity indicators, traceability, sustainable procurement, and business cases to promote circularity, reduce the material footprint and costs, as well as greenhouse gas emissions over the whole value chain of rail transport.

Chair: Samuel Jones, Environment Specialist, Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB)
Co-Chair: Vacant (TBN)
UIC Coordinator: Isabelle De Keyzer

Circular economy projects

REUSE project (Sustainable Use of Resources in Railways)
The opt-in project ZERO WASTE Railways offers the CE sector members the possibility to take part in best practice workshops to be held once or twice a year. The aim of the workshops is to share circular economy best practices and forge new partnerships with the entire supply chain. Content and knowledge collected at the workshops will be used to build a digital Circular economy toolkit to be made available to members.
More information and presentations of the workshops are available here:
- Zero Waste Railways workshop I – Circular inflows
- Zero Waste Railways workshop II – Circular outflows
- Zero Waste Railways workshop III – Circular economy in rail: A stocktake on research, reporting standards and metrics
- Zero Waste Railways workshop IV – Cross sector collaborations and innovations
- Zero Waste Railways Workshop V - How can circularity help railways achieve net zero?
- Zero Waste Railways workshop VI - The Power of Procurement to Achieve Circular and Sustainable Railways
- Zero Waste Railways workshop VII – Circularity beyond zero
- Zero Waste Railways workshop VIII – Embedding reuse in railway infrastructure, building the strategic work plan of the CE Sector

The 3 year opt-in project IRS 30345 “Update of Environmental Specifications for new rolling stock” updating the UIC Leaflet 345 is aimed at creating a worldwide standardised environmental, and circular set of specifications for new rolling stock procurement, to ensure that rail transport remains the most sustainable, fully circular, and environmentally friendly mode of transport. This project will additionally provide the rail community with an international platform to reach a consensus on environmental specifications, as railway stakeholders should align their procurement processes with the UN SDGs and the most recent sustainability reporting frameworks and standards.