The vision of the City of Munich is to become a climate-neutral, resource-friendly circular city that ensures quality assurance for Munich’s society and economy. To achieve this, the city council committee approved the Circular Economy Strategy with a total of 85 actions in December 2025.

Urban rural predominance

Predominantly urban

Vision and objectives

The original ambition was to make reusable takeaway packaging easier to use in everyday life by creating a cross-system take-back infrastructure across the city. This meant enabling people to return reusable cups and food containers conveniently in public spaces, so choosing reusable becomes the easy option for both residents and businesses.

To get there, Munich set out to (1) reduce single-use packaging in the catering sector, helping to prevent littering and cut overall resource consumption, and (2) increase social acceptance of reusables by removing the “hassle factor” through a shared return infrastructure.

A practical focus emerged around testing reverse vending style take back points (in public spaces) as a way to overcome the lack of convenience that keeps many customers using single use packaging.

Implementation journey

Work progressed through building coordination and partnerships, testing ideas, and learning from setbacks. A dedicated Circular Economy Coordination Office began operating in January 2023 to bundle existing initiatives and drive cross-department work, with increasing effort on reusable packaging in 2024.

Munich engaged widely to shape a viable approach: it took part in around 20 events and workshops, held roughly 15–20 stakeholder discussions, and ran 10–15 preliminary partner conversations linked to return infrastructure.

An initial pilot aimed at establishing a city-wide take-back infrastructure using collection machines was discontinued due to financial/economic challenges, but it provided lessons that Munich carried forward.

In 2025, the city sought external support to move from concept to feasible delivery. A Green Assist application was not successful, but Munich then received support via the CCRI external expert scheme, which produced a final report modelling ways to finance and run a take-back infrastructure.

Alongside this, Munich strengthened routine coordination and stakeholder dialogue, including an internal exchange every six weeks and regular participation in reuse roundtables and learning exchanges with other German municipalities.

Key results

The work helped shift reusable packaging from scattered activity to a more joined-up programme. The creation of the coordination office consolidated previously fragmented initiatives and improved internal coordination.

A city-wide take-back system was identified as a promising solution, and Munich advanced from broad intent to clearer options by commissioning a feasibility study under the external expert scheme.

Munich also built momentum on public engagement through awareness-raising and communication activities delivered with partners (including campaigns in public transport, neighbourhood information activities, clean-up events, and educational materials on customer rights and the benefits of reuse).

Where evidence was available, the expert modelling indicated the potential (if implemented at scale) to replace up to 146,000 single-use servings per day, reduce around 1,175 tonnes of packaging waste and 1,300 tonnes of CO₂ annually, create 100–120 local jobs, and save the municipality up to €4.1 million per year through reduced collection and disposal costs.

Deliverables and outputs

Across the pilot period, Munich produced and used several concrete outputs to support decision-making and next steps:

• A feasibility study / final expert report from the CCRI external expert scheme analysing financing and operational models for a cross-system take-back infrastructure (including a not-for-profit Design Build Operate option and open market alternatives).
• A funding proposal/application to support a new pilot that would test practical solutions in real-world conditions.
• This set of project documents: the solution booklet, recommendations and next steps guidance, and the roadmap capturing objectives, progress, and planned actions.

Vision for the future

Munich’s longer‑term direction is to move from planning into delivery: selecting one or two viable approaches, securing political and financial backing, and running a pilot that can be scaled up if successful.

The recommended route is to set clear objectives and measures of success (for example, reuse rates and single‑use items avoided), align internally through workshops, and then implement and evaluate a pilot using take‑back machines with the right operational partners for collection, cleaning and redistribution.

A consistent message runs through the lessons learned: success depends on sustained political commitment, a workable business model, reliable long‑term funding, and strong collaboration that builds trust across the city, businesses and civil society—so the system becomes convenient, credible and widely used.

By the resolution of 18 December 2019, the Munich City Council joined the global coalition of cities declaring a climate emergency, thus recognising that the measures and plans taken so far are not sufficient to limit global warming to the 1.5 degrees Celsius target. With the same draft resolution, the goal of achieving climate neutrality for the entire city was brought forward to 2035.

Zero Waste is a sustainability strategy that aims to produce as little waste as possible and to reuse raw materials. By implementing the Zero Waste concept at municipal level, it is possible to minimise the amount of waste, energy consumption and the use of resources with appropriate measures, thereby contributing to climate neutrality and CO2 minimisation.

On 20 July 2020, the Munich City Council passed the resolution ‘Circular Munich – Circular Economy for a Sustainable Munich’. This illustrates the possibilities for the City of Munich to develop a concept for implementing CE and a Zero Waste Strategy. The resolution finds that the cooperation and networking of various actors of the urban society, local economy and institutions is fundamental for the development into a Circular City.

On 17 December 2025, the City Council approved the Munich Circular Economy Strategy which features a comprehensive Material Flow Analysis. This MFA identified construction, bioeconomy, products and retail, and public procurement as the most significant sectors. Building on these insights, a total of 85 measures and projects were developed in workshops with over 100 experts, supporting Munich in its transition to a more climate-neutral and resource-efficient Circular City. Munich’s vision for 2035 includes a 30 % reduction in material footprint, a doubling circular material use rate, the engagement of 2,000 active organisations in Munich’s circular economy and a 15 % total waste reduction.

Leading organisation

City of Munich

Unit/department/section

Department of Climate and Environmental Protection, Circular Economy Coordination Unit

Participation in other relevant initiatives

• NetZeroCities (Pilot and Mission city)
• Covenant of Mayors
• URBACT: Let’s go Circular! – Paving the way for a circular transition of cities

(Other) Key resources

• City-wide goal of climate neutrality by 2035
• City-wide goal of becoming a Zero Waste City
• City-wide goal of becoming a Circular City
• Munich Circular Economy Strategy (German)
• Integrated Action Plan (English)