Align business support with circular objectives

Supporting businesses in your city to become more circular

Your city government can encourage businesses to scale up their circular economy activities. Understanding the challenges that businesses currently face, and identifying solutions to address these challenges, is the first step in the process to enable more businesses to become circular. By aligning business support programmes, capacity building, and training with your city’s circular economy objectives, your city government can support businesses in their transition towards more circular practices.

Questions to consider:

• What kind of support do startups, SMEs, and businesses need to adopt more circular practices?

• Can your city government leverage the support or resourcing from existing programs that work with startups, SMEs and the business community?

• Are your city government’s suppliers (SMEs and businesses) aware of the support programmes already available to them? If not, how could you support raising awareness with your suppliers?

Examples

1) ReLondon is providing advice, grants, and connections to small-and-medium sized businesses in London to help them embed the principles of the circular economy into their business models and grow sustainably and responsibly. In 2021, ReLondon awarded two rounds of grants, from the Mayor of London’s Green New Deal fund, to help SMEs recover from the economic impacts of COVID-19 by integrating circularity into their businesses.

2) Through the Brussels Regional Programme for a Circular Economy (BRPCE), the government of the Brussels-Capital Region has defined a framework to encourage the transition towards a circular economy in Brussels. As part of the BRPCE, the be circular portal provides information to entrepreneurs and businesses about the various support programmes available to help them deliver change on the ground.

Resources

• The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s case study library provides examples from around the world of businesses and policymakers implementing circular economy practices.

• Circle Economy’s Knowledge Hub provides a collection of business and government case studies from around the globe.