Business case

Impact on the availability of resources as well as their effect on living organisms, ecosystems, and components of the environment.

Ecological Impact

Impacts on the social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families.

Social Impact

Impacts on the financial condition of a company, as well as the the economicconditions of its stakeholders and on economic systems at local, national, andglobal levels.

Economic Impact

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

Efficiency gains on operations or transactions either through cultural or technological shifts

Productivity

Scalability

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

Societal Services

Collecting waste from households and businesses by means of refuse bins, wheeled bins, containers, etc., and providing treatment, incineration, materials recovery and reclamation, and disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous waste

Waste Management

Utilise waste streams as a source of secondary resources and recover waste for reuse and recycling

Use waste as a resource

Account for the systems perspective during the design process, to use the right materials, to design for appropriate lifetime and to design for extended future use

Design for the future

Work together throughout the supply chain, internally within organisations and with the public sector and communities to increase transparency and create joint value

Team up to create joint value

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within the same industry

Valorise waste streams - closed loop

Designing to enable multiple uses and lifecycles of a product and its materials

Design for cyclability

Industry peers to industry peer collaboration to create joint value and identify synergies

Industry collaboration

Engage with the government on circular policies and programmes

Government collaboration

Collection programmes that process products and parts for reuse or recycling within the same industry

Closed loop collection

Transforming waste products into materials and lower value products within the same industry

Closed loop downcycling

Designing products to remove any barriers to recycling and enable easy recyclability

Design for recycling

Putting in place purchasing guidelines for procurement departments and evaluating suppliers on circular economy principles

Circular procurement

Participating in government programmes that support and advance the circular economy

Government programmes

'Regulate' changes the rules of the systems to achieve compliance through enforcement. 


Regulate

Legislation

Other legislation

Slow strategies aim to keep materials in use for as long as possible, for example through design for durability and repairability. A more circular economy is also a slower one: materials, components, and products—and even buildings and infrastructure—that we lock in stocks are made to last. This will lower material demand in the long run, in essence also serving to narrow resource flows.

Slow

Cycle strategies aim to cycle and reuse materials at their highest value: they maximise the volume of secondary materials re-entering the economy, ultimately minimising the need for virgin material inputs and therefore also narrowing flows. Of course, virgin materials will always be needed to a degree: all materials degrade and can’t be cycled infinitely, use energy, and require blending with virgin materials to maintain strength and functionality.

Cycle

Impacts

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Industries

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A framework of policy instruments that enabled and encourage the transition to the circular economy

Policy Instruments

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A framework of policy instruments that enable and stimulate the transition to the circular economy

The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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SolarGik's mission is to unlock the potential of solar energy by solving the industry's biggest challenges - intermittency, reliability, predictability, and flexible production and distribution.  ​ SolarGik was founded by veterans of the solar energy industry with hundreds of years of combined solar industry experience. They have designed, installed and operated hundreds of thousands of solar trackers with Gigawatts of installed capacity. 

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Through the research and development of composite materials, Sunman has successfully commercialized the world's first glass-free, lightweight and flexible Panel – eArc. Replacing glass completely, eArc brings solar power to markets and applications scenarios that were previously impossible.  Page 6 North America  TURN- We gamify recycling & reuse.
Turn eliminates single-use plastic cups at large-scale events across Australia, US, and Europe.
The TURN system includes reusable products such as cups, reverse vending bins that collect all products post-consumer use through a customizable incentive system, and fully autonomous and mobile washing systems engineered specifically to wash, rinse, and sanitize reusable products on-site or in close proximity. As you can imagine, there is a huge customer acquisition data play available here, as the TURN system encompasses both software and hardware offerings.  Page 7 North America  TURN- We gamify recycling & reuse.
Turn eliminates single-use plastic cups at large-scale events across Australia, US, and Europe.
The TURN system includes reusable products such as cups, reverse vending bins that collect all products post-consumer use through a customizable incentive system, and fully autonomous and mobile washing systems engineered specifically to wash, rinse, and sanitize reusable products on-site or in close proximity. As you can imagine, there is a huge customer acquisition data play available here, as the TURN system encompasses both software and hardware offerings.  Page 8 South America  Developed a technology capable to transform recycling materials into clean energy with high efficiency.  

Oman

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be'ah

Government of Oman

<p>Facing growing waste dumping practices, governorates of Oman decided to benefit from the expertise of a specialised company such as be'ah, to manage waste while recycling it, hence benefiting from it locally and achieving the principles of environmental sustainability such as reducing the pressure on the extraction of land resources.</p>