While recent years has seen a growth of circular economy industrial applications, evidence suggests that the uptake of circular approaches in many sectors is still limited. This report provides evidence on barriers and enablers to the implementation of circular economy business models in two value chains that exhibit high levels of waste generation: the electrical and electronic equipment and agri-food value chains.
The report outlines how businesses implementing circularity approaches face a variety of barriers originating from existing policies, economic factors, supply chains, technology, consumer preferences and internal company organization. It also provides recommendations to overcome existing barriers and support the circular transition in the two value chains investigated: increase the use of different forms of financial support; better align requirements stemming from different pieces of legislation; improve consumers’ understanding of circular solutions; and support transparency and traceability across supply chains.
Data and information were collected through in-depth interviews with 41 case study companies that were involved in the EU-funded CIRC4Life project, as well as from additional cases of firms putting such models into practice.