Linear turns Circular. Forstering circular economy for SMEs

L2C

Sustainability has become an important economic, socio-political and environmental issue and is at the top of the political agenda - both in Germany and in Europe. The European Union launched the Green Deal in 2019 to draw attention to climate change and environmental degradation, which now pose an existential threat to the world. This policy document aims to ensure a better and healthier life for future generations. It points the way to a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy that, among other things, decouples growth from resource consumption.

Goals and contents

The idea for this project arose when the project partners discussed the necessity and urgency of aligning their own institutions towards more sustainability and initiating the process of rethinking towards more circularity. Questions arose as to how to initiate and implement the transition to circular economy principles with the involvement of relevant stakeholders inside and outside their own organization, but these could not be answered.

The situation in which many European SMEs find themselves is characterized by a lack of information and a lack of understanding of how to plan and organize the transition. At the same time, high expectations are placed on the business sector to introduce change and promote reforms towards the circular economy.

In order to reduce this discrepancy, the L2C project team has set itself the task of counteracting this knowledge and information deficit. The aim is to equip small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and in particular their managers, with the necessary skills and provide them with practical tools to increase their understanding of the topic and make it feasible.

The L2C project is planning various learning methods to make the topic of the circular economy accessible:

In the storytelling book, various companies from three countries present how they organized the transformation process. Managers tell personal stories about the beginnings, challenges and successes they were able to achieve. This format is intended to motivate and inspire other entrepreneurs to initiate change.
Practical implementation, planning and analysis materials will be developed to provide companies with the right strategies and action plans to take action themselves.
Finally, SME managers will receive further training as part of a short learning programme to enable them to implement the transformation process in their own organization.