Circular Economy for everyday life (VIBE).

In the European project VIBE, we are developing a scalable model for Urban Resource Centers (URCs). Our goal: to connect and communicate waste prevention, repair, and reuse in such a way that they become the easiest and most logical choice for the entire urban society.

The challenge

Europe’s goal is to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, yet our current circularity rate stands at only 12 percent. The problem is not a lack of ideas, but fragmentation: repair services, recycling centers, and lending libraries often work in isolation from one another. This creates a significant “communication gap” between technical circular economy concepts and the everyday lives of citizens. Many circular initiatives fail because their communication is either too technical or focused on an ecological niche. This project, funded by the European Climate Initiative (EUKI), addresses the challenge of closing this gap between infrastructure and citizen behavior.

Our Approach

The project VIBE (Value-based Initiatives for Behavioral Engagement) operates together with partners in Latvia, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and Hungary. Instead of merely managing the status quo of waste management, we are creating coordinated, citizen-proximate structures for a true urban circular economy. Circular Berlin’s role is to understand behavior and remove barriers, translating the URC concept into people’s daily realities. We lead the development of the “Communication & Brand Toolkit,” relying on hard facts rather than assumptions.

Our work includes:

Strategic Positioning: We position URCs as attractive “Third Spaces” through a modular branding system that works in Berlin just as well as in Riga or Barcelona, without suppressing local identity.

Behavioral Analysis & Online Surveys: We listen closely to understand citizen needs and identify the hurdles that prevent them from using circular services.

Citizen-Oriented Communication Campaigns: We develop strategies and visual modules to help municipalities and URC operators make their services visible, accessible, and attractive.

European-Wide Networking & On-Site Visits: Resource protection knows no borders. We analyze successful URCs across partner countries and present the makers and locations here on this page.

The Outcomes

The ultimate goal of VIBE is radical openness. All developed guidelines, research data, and design assets will be released as Open Source materials. This means every initiative, neighborhood shop, and municipality can access our research and designs to make the local circular economy visible, accessible, and successful. We are building a coordinated framework for planning location-independent Urban Resource Centers that systematically anchor services like repair cafés, maker spaces, and tool libraries in cities.

Project Timeline: From Vision to Reality We are working intensively for two years on the future of our cities:

• February 2026: Project start and research phase (online surveys and URC site visits).
• September 2026: Publication of the Communication Guidelines.
• January 2027: Beta-testing of the Brand Toolkit in the partner cities.
• January 2028: Final rollout of all Open Source results for everyone.

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