Cities–home to half the world’s population–are already ahead of national governments in meeting goals to cut carbon emissions. Many are now also beginning to think about one of the next steps in sustainability: building a “circular economy,” one that is restorative and regenerative by design.

Google is trying to help lead that push. For the last two years, the tech company has been working with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, an organization focused on building the circular economy, to figure out how it can embed circularity into its own organization–and how digital technology can help others, particularly cities, make the transition to a circular economy.

“I think for us, because the circular economy framework is a systems approach, it fits very well with how we think at Google,” says Kate Brandt, lead for sustainability at Google. “We’re very much systems thinkers.”

Today, products follow a typical path: Companies dig up materials and fossil fuels to make a product, ship it (often thousands of miles) to a consumer, who ultimately throws it out. In a circular economy, by contrast, products would stay in use as long as possible, and their components would be reused and recycled instead of heading to a landfill.

Internally, Google has been applying circular principles in its own operations. Servers, for example, are maintained to keep them in use as long as possible; when a server needs new parts, those are now sourced from old servers. If a server is taken out of service, it’s remanufactured with updated technology to be used again, rather than replaced. When the equipment becomes too outdated, the hard drives are wiped so it can be sold on the secondary market. Whatever can’t be reused is recycled.

In a white paper, Google and Ellen MacArthur Foundation lay out how the concept can be applied more broadly than just in products. Cities can plan buildings that minimize material use, in part through shared, flexible spaces. Shared transportation can also be prioritized, and as car use declines, space dedicated to roads can be converted to other uses. Instead of sending food waste to landfill, cities can use compost to grow more local food. Everything can run on renewable energy.

All of this can be aided by digital tech, and Google is pushing to help develop those tools and identify how its existing technology could be used to advance a circular agenda. Project Sunroof, for example, which lets homeowners and cities identify roofs that could use solar panels, can enable the spread of local, renewable energy, but can also help cities make better use of resources.