Circular Economy Ecosystems: an initial investigation of key features and stakeholder roles

Six out of the nine planetary boundaries, the safe operating space for humanity within Earth’s biophysical and biochemical limits, are transgressed, which poses systemic life-supporting risks. Contributing to the transgressing of planetary boundaries is the indiscriminate use of resources, leading to a scarcity threat.
The Circular Economy (CE) is an alternative model to shift the current logic of resource consumption into a model that recognises the exhaustibility and finitude of natural resources. However, it is failing to deliver on its promise. Particularly, the lack of collaboration jeopardises CE solutions. Data from ready2LOOP indicates that product manufacturers have only 48% readiness for value chain collaboration; meaning that most companies are still understanding the potential or planning pilot initiatives for collaboration.
Although few studies approach CE with a systemic lens the CE Ecosystem theory emerged to extrapolate the industrial boundaries and focus on the collaboration efforts towards a circular value proposition. However, it is not yet clear how CE Ecosystems are formed and maintained, as well as the roles and motivations of actors, and mainly how it is possible to support the transition to CE within ecosystems.
Through a systematic literature review, this research investigated:
(i) Key features that characterise CE Ecosystems, from which it is possible to identify and categorise them. For example, the centrality of CE initiatives within ecosystems (activity vs actor), or their system interactions (material, knowledge or economic value flows), among others.
(ii) Stakeholder’s roles in CE Ecosystem, specifically heterogeneity, alignment of interests, definition of clear roles (e.g., orchestrators, enablers, provider), reliability, and power dynamics.
Ultimately, this research’s outcome provides the requirements for the development of a framework that gathers theoretical and practical insights to support the CE transition of entire ecosystems.