Circular Economy

Regional Level Circular Economy

Businesses are integral to achieving Europe’s vision for 2030 environmental goals. While the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the EU’s Green Deal serve as useful guides towards achieving climate action goals, businesses can be a key contributor to achieving SDGs and EU’ Green Deal goals if and when they help the economy transition to a circular one.

In a practical manner, Circular Economy (CE) is a model of production and consumption based on sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible. In a broader way, it is a tool that addresses both the need to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss, while also addressing important social needs. Thus, to achieve CE transition process, collaboration and co‐creation between different societal actors such as business‐to‐business and the public‐private sector need to pick-up. Furthermore, a connection between the goals of a circular economy and responsible innovation principles (such as ethical acceptability; societal desirability) can be synergized.

Who is involved?

Circular Economy is already strongly aligned with successful and resilient innovation systems at the regional level. As regional actors know best how their local ecosystems (businesses and stakeholders) will react to regional innovation activities, the co-creation and collaboration with businesses could serve useful in achieving a CE. Subnational and regional entities like regions, municipalities, districts or provinces play crucial roles in the emergence and dissemination of Circular Economy initiatives. Their knowledge on how to make use of the available natural resources, secondary resources and waste, available scientific workforce, as well as local know‐how in technical skills and traditions, allow them to play an important role in CE strategies.

One way to address circular economy goals at the regional level, i.e. regions, municipalities, districts or provinces, is to encourage regional and local businesses to create a common understanding of the CE possibilities in alignment with responsible innovation dimensions and integration of regional responsible innovation goals with those of businesses and vise-versa. This may require businesses to incorporate responsible innovation into products, services and business models for the purpose of achieving a sustainable circular economy. It would also provide businesses an opportunity to align their business goals with other social responsibility goals.

How to get there?

In the transition to a Circular Economy it is essential to understand the kinds of societal and environmental impacts your company’s CE transition will have. YAGHMA guides your business through the transition into CE and assesses where your circular activities stand. YAGHMA utilizes an in-house strategy matrix to best grasp which CE values are important to you and your stakeholders. We conduct a material analysis within the realm of circular economy and identify a company’s material responsible innovation priorities specific to their circular economy objectives. Using these prioritized indicators, we will assess whether or not your activities are in line with CE values and tailor-make a strategy to help you meet the most impactful performance criteria. At the same time, our process guides you through development, technical feasibility and commercial potential of circular economy priorities.

To find out more about our materiality assessment read Material Issues in the Blossoming World of AI or contact us!