CircularPSP: Public service platforms for circular and resilient municipalities

CircularPSP was a 3-year Horizon Europe project that accelerated the digital transition towards a Circular Economy (CE) across European cities. By combining Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) with advanced Artificial Intelligence, the project developed and piloted digital public service platforms to help local governments and businesses plan, procure, and execute circular solutions at scale.

The challenge

While accelerating a circular economy is central to achieving climate neutrality and European sustainability targets, local governments face major operational bottlenecks. Municipal staff and local SMEs frequently struggle to navigate fragmented circular data, lack standardized procurement guidance, and miss cross-departmental insights needed to transition everyday public services. Most cities lack tailored digital tools to structure circular decision-making, track circularity indicators under the EU Taxonomy, and share reusable knowledge across language and administrative barriers.

Our approach

Across Europe, a Buyers Group representing 8 cities and 45 million citizens invested €5.64 million through Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) to co-design and procure AI-powered public service platforms.

As an independent, non-municipal partner, Circular Berlin served as an agile Circular Innovation Broker and project “translator”. We bridged technical solution providers with local municipal real-world needs, handling heavy coordination and simplifying complex digital tools for local stakeholders.

In Berlin, Circular Berlin led the real-world testing of two digital platform solutions across four distinct local stakeholder groups:

1. Central Level: Senate Department for Urban Mobility, Transport, Climate Action and the Environment (Department of Circular Economy).
2. District Level: 2 District offices supported by local Climate Change Officers.
3. Municipal Enterprises: A daughter company of Berlin’s municipal waste management company (Berlin Recycling).
4. Local Business & Ecosystem Partners: Testing software capabilities for local market alignment and procurement workflows.

The platforms integrated Natural Language Processing (NLP), EU Taxonomy data analytics, and automated workflow assistance to break down language barriers and help staff translate strategy into daily tasks.

The outcomes

The CircularPSP project officially concluded with tangible software solutions and key insights on driving municipal innovation:

• Tangible AI-Powered Platform Deployment: Contractors (VCG.AI and CircularAI) delivered public service platforms capable of generating actionable circular project blueprints, conducting automated data synthesis, and assessing procurement alignments.
• Practical Ideation & Procurement Tools: In Berlin, municipal teams successfully used the platform’s AI assistants for concrete use cases—such as drafting sustainability guidelines for local public events, evaluating procurement alignments, and mapping projects into structured KPI/OKR frameworks.
• Funding Integration & Strategy Alignment: The platforms highlighted funding opportunities directly linked to circular actions, serving as a catalyst for launching new local initiatives.
• Key Lessons for Municipal Circularity: The Berlin testing phase provided essential policy recommendations:
  • Top-down mandates: Circular innovation cannot rely solely on volunteer staff; leadership must provide clear mandates.
  • Localisation is key: Platforms must adapt to local administrative processes, language, and IT security rules rather than offering a one-size-fits-all model.
  • Human facilitators: Software must be coupled with funded “human translators”—such as local Climate Officers—to guide onboarding and long-term implementation.

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