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 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 ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

Reduced use of virgin materials and/or an increase of the use of secondary and bio-based materials

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

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)

Extracting resources and processing them to produce materials for use bysociety

Materials and Fuels

Extracting and gathering wood through forestry and producing wood and paper products

Wood and Paper

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

Use waste as a resource

Using materials that can be easily reused or recycled after use

Reusable, recyclable materials and inputs

Using waste materials that have been processed and recycled to produce new products within the same industry

Using closed loop recycled materials

**Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable**

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The pandemic has caused major shifts in migration patterns, including huge movements of people in and out of urban areas. Furthermore, climate change and conflicts tend to have disproportionate impacts on cities. These factors mean that the world is far from achieving the goal of sustainable cities.  
In many developing countries, slum populations have been growing, putting at risk the target of adequate housing for all by 2030. Since 2015, the number of countries with national disaster risk reduction strategies has more than doubled. 

Cities are hubs for ideas, commerce, culture, science, productivity, and social, human and economic development. Urban planning, transport systems, water, sanitation, waste management, disaster risk reduction, access to information, education and capacity-building are all relevant issues to sustainable urban development.

This target entails multiple essential concepts such as disaster risk reduction (DRR) and sustainable transport.

To achieve SDG 11, efforts must focus on strengthening capacities for planning for urban development, improving access to public transportation, and enhancing waste management. 

Sources: [https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal11](https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal11)
[https://sdgs.un.org/topics/sustainable-cities-and-human-settlements](https://sdgs.un.org/topics/sustainable-cities-and-human-settlements)


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11. Sustainable cities and communities

Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

**Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns**

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The world is seriously off track in its effort to halve per-capita food waste and losses by 2030.The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impacts on consumption and production patterns, with disruptions to global supply chains and changes in consumer behaviour. 

Responsible consumption and production must be an integral part of the recovery from the pandemic. 
But the global economy also needs to speed up the decoupling of economic growth from resource use by maximizing the socio-economic benefits of resources while minimizing their negative impacts. 

Reporting on corporate sustainability has tripled since the beginning of the SDG period, but the private sector will need to significantly improve reporting on activities that contribute to the SDGs. 

This primarily entails environmentally sound management of "toxic chemicals" A substantial use of chemicals is essential to meet the social and economic goals of the world community, and these can be used with a high degree of safety when best practices are followed.  Gross chemical contamination, with grave damage to human health, genetic structures reproductive outcomes, and the environment, has been continuing within some of the world's most important industrial areas, and restoration will require major investment as well as the development of new techniques.
Effective control of the generation, storage, treatment, recycling and reuse, transport, recovery and disposal of hazardous wastes is another similar challenge. 
In addition,  solid wastes include all domestic refuse and non-hazardous wastes such as commercial and institutional wastes, street sweepings construction debris, and, in some countries, human wastes. As hazardous waste is frequently intermixed with other waste, this poses particular management challenges.
Finally, this target ensures that radioactive waste is safely managed, transported, stored and disposed of, with a view to protecting human health and the environment. 

To deliver SDG12, it is crucial to implement policies that support the shift to sustainable practices and decouple economic growth from resource use.

Sources: [https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal12](https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal12)
[https://sdgs.un.org/topics/chemicals-and-waste](https://sdgs.un.org/topics/chemicals-and-waste)

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12. Responsible consumption and production

Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

**Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts**

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The science is clear: our climate is heating rapidly. The average global temperatures have increased by 1.2 degrees Celsius since 1880, particularly in the late 20th century. The concentration of atmospheric CO2, the GHG that contributes more than 2/3 to global warming, is at its highest level ever. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) steadily points out that human activities have warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land, producing widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere. 

Without transformative action starting now and within this decade to reduce greenhouse gas emissions deeply and rapidly in all sectors, the 1.5°C target will be at risk and with it the lives of more than 3 billion people. 
According to IPCC, warming beyond 1.5 degrees could have irreversible and irreparable consequences. However, effective and equitable adaptation and mitigation actions can significantly reduce vulnerability and contribute to climate resilience. To limit global warming to well below 2, preferably 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels, countries came together to hold themselves accountable under the Paris Agreement. 

Failure to act leads to intensifying heat waves, droughts, flooding, wildfires, sea-level rise, and famines. Emissions should already be decreasing now and will need to be cut almost by half by 2030 - a mere seven years from now. 


To combat climate change and its impacts by 2030, urgent and transformative action is needed to meet the commitments under the Paris Agreement across mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Sources: [https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal13](https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal13)
[https://sdgs.un.org/topics/climate-action-synergies](https://sdgs.un.org/topics/climate-action-synergies)

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13. Climate action

Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

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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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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**These 17 Goals recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.**

The SDGs build on decades of work by countries and the UN, and especially on the Millennium Declaration adopted in September 2000 at UN Headquarters in New York which let to the elaboration of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce extreme poverty by 2015.

In 2015, the Paris Agreement was signed. A major blueprint came out of this: The Sustainable Development Goals: 17 overarching goals—and 169 targets—that governments are aiming to meet by 2030. Significant progress has been made in terms of poverty, health and inequality, but there's still a way to go. This is where the circular economy comes in: by circulating resources multiple times, the circular economy tackles issues of scarcity and allows all to access what they need—without overburdening the earth. If it's implemented in a holistic way—affording attention to social considerations and the fair distribution of resources— it also offers a pathway for achieving the SDGs; and the link between the two is ever-growing. To read more about the link between the SDGs and the circular economy, click [here](https://www.circle-economy.com/blogs/how-the-circular-economy-can-help-us-reach-the-sustainable-development-goals).

It is the Division for Sustainable Development Goals (DSDG) in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) which provides substantive support and capacity-building for the SDGs and their related thematic issues. TheDSDG plays a key role in the evaluation of UN systemwide implementation of the 2030 Agenda and in advocacy and outreach activities relating to the SDGs. In order to make the 2030 Agenda a reality, broad ownership of the SDGs must translate into a strong commitment by all stakeholders to implement the global goals. DSDG aims to help facilitate this engagement.
Alongside this, the annual High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development serves as the central UN platform for the follow-up and review of the SDGs.
In addition, the UN Secretary-General presents an annual SDG Progress report, which is developed in cooperation with the UN System, and based on the global indicator framework and data produced by national statistical systems and information collected at the regional level.

To read more information: [https://sdgs.un.org/goals](https://sdgs.un.org/goals)

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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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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France

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Producer of sustainable paper for packaging industry made from green waste

Releaf Paper

Releaf Paper is a pioneering and forward-thinking organization that transforms environmentally friendly waste into precious resources for the paper and packaging sector.Their objective is to manufacture environmentally friendly paper without causing any harm to the environment.Not only do they manufacture paper from fallen leaves, but they also provide brands with their own eco-friendly packaging created from Releaf Paper.&nbsp;