Governing chemicals across circular value chains · MIUN & Sundsvalls kommun
Circular economy strategies that keep materials in use longer simultaneously extend the pathways through which chemicals travel, into products, wastewater, sludge, and back into the economy through recycling. This is not a side effect. It is a structural feedback built into circularity itself.
Sundsvall municipality manages chemical-bearing material flows, including PFAS in textiles, wastewater, and recycled materials, across multiple governance tiers: procurement decisions, operational management, inspection, and business regulation. These decisions are made independently, but their consequences are shared. Without a system-level picture, the municipality cannot see how circular decisions in one tier create chemical risk outcomes in another.
CHEMSYS addresses the governance problem at this interface, not chemical risk management in isolation, but the feedback between circular economy objectives and chemical exposure outcomes, mediated by multi-tier municipal governance.
ModelThink AB leads the system dynamics and simulation work within CHEMSYS. The work includes development of causal loop diagrams connecting procurement decisions, material flows, wastewater treatment, sludge management, and governance structures across four stakeholder groups: elected officials, civil servants, inspectors, and business representatives.
The model is built through Group Model Building workshops, stakeholders build the model together, creating shared understanding of the system they govern and shared ownership of the leverage points identified.
A backcasting process from a 2050 vision of a chemical-safe society frames the analytical direction, while stock-and-flow simulation enables the municipality to test interventions, identify delayed effects, and assess trade-offs between chemical safety and circular economy goals before committing.
The central output is a simulation-based policy support framework that enables the municipality to test interventions, identify leverage points, and assess long-term consequences and trade-offs under uncertainty, grounded in the actual structure of the system they manage.