Circular News Digest: July 2026

What’s moving the circular economy in Berlin this month? We’ve curated the latest policy updates, local Berlin initiatives, and Circular Economy innovations across packaging, construction, electronics and textile.

Start des Circular Economy Hub Berlin

he newly launched Circular Economy Hub Berlin provides a free, open-access digital competence platform designed to help businesses take their first practical steps toward circularity.

Die Plattform bietet leicht verständliche Module, Erklärvideos, umfassende Leitfäden und Quizzes, die speziell auf den Geschäftsalltag zugeschnitten sind. Sie gibt klare Orientierung entlang der etablierten R-Strategien der Kreislaufwirtschaft und hilft Unternehmen dabei, genau den richtigen Startpunkt zu finden. Um den Schritt von der Theorie in die Praxis zu erleichtern, präsentiert der Hub reale, industrielle Good-Practice-Beispiele direkt aus Berlin.

Hier gehts zur Plattform: ce-hub.berlin

Updates from Circular Electronics

Das Potenzial des Elektroschrotts in unseren Schubladen nutzen

With an estimated 170 to 200 million unused smartphones and tablets gathering dust in German households, Deutsche Telekom, Interzero, and missio Aachen are teaming up to extract these urban resources. They have relaunched the Telekom Mobile Phone Collection Center to tackle the main barrier to electronics recycling: consumers’ data security fears.

Interzero steuert dabei die gesamte Logistikkette der Rücknahme. Das umfasst die zertifizierte Datenlöschung sowie eine professionelle Prüfung. So wird sichergestellt, dass die Geräte entweder für ein zweites Leben aufbereitet oder sicher recycelt werden, um wertvolle Metalle wie Gold und Silber zurückzugewinnen.

Für jedes gesammelte Gerät gehen 50 Cent an eine von zwölf Partnerorganisationen. Dazu gehört auch das katholische Hilfswerk missio Aachen, das mit den Geldern Familien in Ghana unterstützt, die in der Nähe der Elektroschrott-Müllhalde Agbogbloshie leben.

Updates from Circular Packaging

prepared by Casper van Alfen

Potsdam’s single-use packaging tax took effect July 1. Pressure now on Berlin.

The tax applies from July 1, 2026 to all restaurants, Imbisse, cafés with to-go offers. Whoever uses reusables pays nothing. A coalition of DUH, Mehrwegverband, Recup and 22 other organizations explicitly calls on Berlin and other Brandenburg cities to follow, and a DUH survey shows eight more Brandenburg cities interested.

PPWR becomes fully applicable on August 12th.

With the European Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) taking effect, companies will face a fundamental re-organization of their processes, including packaging but also handling of data, information, and supply chains.
PPWR covers all packaging placed on the EU market regardless of material or origin. From that date, every packaging type needs a written EU Declaration of Conformity, the PFAS ban in food-contact packaging applies, and the minimization duty starts. Companies will have to record, document, and make information available along the supply chain in a standardised way, and data must be complete, correct, and unambiguous.

Germany’s reusable beverage quota stays far below target.

New official figures published this July show the reusable beverage quota stood at 34.5% in 2024, a mere 0.2 points up on the year before, against a target of 70%. The longer trend stings more: since the deposit obligation started in 2003, the quota has fallen from 63.7% to under 35%. Roughly 94 million liters of beverage did shift from single-use to reusable packaging year-on-year, so things are moving; just very slowly.

Updates from Circular Construction

prepared by Jerry Popoola

Berlin’s Local Circular Construction Updates

The Berlin Senate has passed the “Law for Simple Construction” Gesetz für einfaches Bauen (GEB) in May. Framed as a housing and cost-reduction measure for affordable housing in Berlin, the legislation is designed for the speed and volume of new builds, while also affecting the adaptive reuse of existing structures. Projects involving Umnutzung (repurposing/change of use) and attic conversions are exempt from modern thermal, acoustic, and vibration retrofitting mandates for existing building parts. The primary impact for the circular sector is that Bestandstransformation is administratively simplified, which alters the regulatory conditions for demolition. Finally, this framework codifies “Building Type E,” establishing a legally recognized “simple and experimental” building category.

TU Berlin progress with B(e) Ware Hub

The Reallabor B(e) Ware, led by the Natural Building Lab at TU Berlin together with ZRS, has entered its implementation phase. The testing bed is expanding its scope from structural timber to include secondary components such as reclaimed steel girders. Salvaged materials harvested from regional demolition sites are cataloged and processed at a central material hub in Spandau to establish a supply pipeline for structural elements. To test blueprints for damage diagnostics and regulatory compliance, the project is implementing these secondary structures into three localized pilot builds: the TULIUM museum pavilion (Charlottenburg), a DLRG water rescue station at Lake Müggelsee, and a workshop facility in Lichtenberg.

Low-Tech Holz-Lehmbau Campus Nears Completion

In Weissensee, architecture firm Architecture firm Sauerbruch Hutton and developer B&O Bau are nearing completion on the Holz-Lehmbau Campus Berlin (HLCB), a project functioning as a real-world laboratory (Reallabor) for circular, low-tech construction. The project utilized the site’s existing concrete surfaces by slicing and restacking them into new foundations to reduce new concrete usage. Designed for disassembly, the structure utilizes local pine wood, straw, and a glue-free wood-clay hybrid ceiling developed alongside Bauhaus Erde. The building regulates its climate via passive, low-tech systems.

Updates from Textile

Berlin AI textile sorting startup reverse.fashion lands seven-figure

Das Berliner KI-Startup reverse.fashion hat sich eine siebenstellige Erweiterung seiner Pre-Seed-Finanzierungsrunde durch den High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) gesichert. Das im Juli 2026 bekannt gegebene Investment zielt darauf ab, einen zentralen Engpass in der textilen Kreislaufwirtschaft durch die Skalierung der automatisierten Sortiertechnologie des Unternehmens zu beheben.

reverse.fashion entwickelt KI-basierte Systeme, die mithilfe von Computer Vision, maschinellem Lernen und moderner Sensortechnik Secondhand-Kleidung automatisch erfassen und digitalisieren. In Echtzeit analysiert das System die Stücke dabei nach Kriterien wie Material, Zustand, Marke und Stil.

Read article