Circular economy – the silver bullet for environmentally sustainable profitability?

By now it is probably safe to say that circular economy as a concept has moved from a weak signal to a megatrend. Academic literature on the topic has increased dramatically (Geissdorfer et al., 2017) and along with the literature, businesses have realized they need to adapt their way of generating social, environmental and economic value when faced with the urgent resource scarcity and climate challenges (Epstein, 2018). However, most of the rhetoric thus far has focused on creating circular economies on a systems level or societal level (European Commission, 2015, MacArthur et al. 2015, EEA 2016 and others), whereas less work has been done on highlighting the business benefits of circular economy models from the perspective of the individual company. The circular economy advocates often claim that circular economy is the best and easiest way to make more efficient use of resources, and to reduce resource dependence and waste generation. Besides favorable environmental impacts, circular business models would provide profitable growth opportunities, improve competitiveness, and promote innovation. But despite all potential benefits of circular economy, most companies have not yet seized its potential. For this reason, even the widespread and profitable benefits of circular economy will often only remain academic training and political rhetoric