A leading city for conventions and exhibitions, Paris uses large amounts of temporary structures made from timber in constructing these events. As a result, reducing waste while developing more circular solutions for these short-term infrastructures has become a real ambition.

Involving designers, event planners, site managers and waste management companies, the pilot aims to create a use and reuse system, adopting “tracking label” technology to log the reuse status of all wood materials.

Developing a wide range of online tools, the pilot has been designed to address the many barriers identified for reuse in the event industry, including strain on storage, difficulty in matching supply and demand, identifying material quality and encouraging transparency of resources in circulation by some collection and waste management operators.

Designed to support and encourage a shift towards more circular economy practices, the pilot takes three interconnected objectives into consideration:

1. Making recycled wood accessible in a simple and efficient way.
2. Creating ease of access and reuse of wood between different organisations.
3. Developing technological solutions, awareness, and knowledge of the circular economy.

The city’s ambitions are supported by REFLOW, a Horizon2020 project, which aims to develop circular and regenerative cities through enabling active citizen involvement and systemic change to re-think the current approach to material flows in cities.