Business case

Impact on increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

Contribution to social parity, or impact on social disparity

Equality

Direct and indirect effects that increase revenues or the potential for new revenues, for example from new products, customer segments, partnerships or business models

Revenue Potential

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)

Contributing to the improvement of biodiversity including species diversity, total number of protected species, and ecosystem health

Biodiversity

Providing public and private education and support services at any level or for any profession, and governmental and public administration services, including judicial, regulatory, and legislative activities, taxation, defence, public order and safety, immigration services, foreign affairs and the administration of government programmes

Education and Government 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

Producing and providing leisure and personal products and services for consumers, such as cleaning products, sports equipment and toys, personal and beauty care products, as well as domestic and personal services such as caretaking, cleaning, hairdressing and other beauty treatment, funeral and related activities

Personal Products and Services

Producing basic and specialty chemicals, inks, agricultural chemical such as fertilisers and pesticides, plastics including packaging, and rubber

Chemical and Plastic

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

Use waste as a resource

Consider opportunities to create greater value and align incentives that build on the interaction between products and services

Rethink the business model

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

Valorise waste streams - closed loop

Designing to reduce waste during production and use

Design out waste

Providing services through a subscription plan with regular payment schemes

Subscription-based services

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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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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 On February 20, 2020, SWEEP: Sea Waste Education to Eradicate Plastic hosted the Plastic Waste Solutions Summit at the Main Atrium of SM City Bacolod. The Summit was organized to celebrate the milestones of the project’s two-year implementation and recognize partners from local government units, government agencies, civil society organizations, enterprises and communities in Negros and the Philippines.SWEEP – implemented by the Philippine Reef and Rainforest Conservation Foundation Inc. (PRRCFI) under the USAID Municipal Waste Recycling Program – kicked off in April 2018 aiming to increase public awareness on marine plastic pollution and to work together with local government units in implementing policies to improve solid waste management of plastic waste.Throughout the project, SWEEP conducted various initiatives such as community coastal clean-ups and waste audits, a mobile museum road tour, designing and launching Wala Usik Sari-Sari Stores, and helping craft public and private policies on improved solid waste management. 

Pure Oceans is a marine conservation social enterprise. We are working on marine plastic litter in the Verde Island Passage of the Coral Triangle, Philippines. Diverting coastal plastic waste into the circular economy.Learning kitchen for plastic upcycling & Circular DesignWaste Management Redesigned for Island CommunitiesBeach voluntourism trips for your company or group

Mabini

The Incubation Network sources, supports and scales innovative solutions that tackle plastic pollution. Together with their diverse network of key partners, they work to optimize land-based plastic waste management, and advance a circular economy in South and Southeast Asia.

The network is an initiative by The Circulate Initiative and SecondMuse.

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The Incubation Network

A marine conservation social enterprise based in the Philippines, working with below-the-line island and coastal communities in the Verde Island Passage of the Coral Triangle, to design waste management systems and divert coastal plastic waste into the circular economy.

Pure Oceans

<p>Pure Oceans is a marine conservation social enterprise based in the Philippines, working with below-the-line island and coastal communities in the Verde Island Passage of the Coral Triangle, to design waste management systems and divert coastal plastic waste into the circular economy. Their project seeks to combat ocean plastic pollution in poor communities through the inclusion of women as primary agents of change.</p><p>Specifically, the project with The Incubation Networl pilots two new business models, in three island/coastal locations: 1) Cloth diaper subscription service 2) Refillable home/lifestyle products sold door-to-door, as an alternative to sachets. It also provides additional income for sales agents, who will be disadvantaged mothers receiving conditional cash transfers from the government to keep their children in school and it promotes behavioral changes in local communities on plastic use. It also works closely with the volunteers who manage marine protection and the locations’ material recovery facilities and it carries out a market assessment on the demand for compostable diapers.</p>