Chapter 13: Circular Economy Business Models: A Systemic Approach to Balancing the Pillars of Sustainability

The overproduction phenomenon generates massive waste, whereas climate change has been a growing menace, and the unabated demand for products and non-renewable resources has hitherto remained a challenge for the world’s economy. Besides, these challenges are worsened by traditional business models following a linear approach based on the principle of ‘take-make-dispose’, which has been greatly worsening the already depleting state of the environment.

UNEP (2020) gives an estimate that global output waste is set to increase by 70% by 2050 while momentum builds to implement sustainable production and consumption methodologies. On the other hand, IPCC (2021) warns that in two decades or so, the world temperature is going to surpass the critical threshold of 1.5°C, while causing irreversible ecological damage, coupled with severe socio-economic impacts.