Circular Fitout Lab

Business in the Community (BITC) partnered with the University of Exeter to run the Circular Fit-out Lab, funded by the UKRI CE-Hub and JLL. The project enabled companies that commission fit-out projects for offices and retail units to share solutions for adopting circular economy principles in their projects, and accelerate change in their organisations.

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About the programme

The Circular Fitout Lab followed an action-learning process identifying common barriers faced when incorporating circular economy into fit-out projects, particularly internal ‘organisational’ barriers which prevent circular solutions from being adopted, as well as actions that can be taken to overcome them. Organisations that participated in the Circular Fitout Lab were Burger King UK, Derwent London, Informa, JLL, Seasalt Cornwall, and The Midcounties Cooperative.

The three stages of the programme

Autumn/Winter 2023 Research Phase

We gained a deep understanding of the barriers to adopting circular economy practices in fitout projects including organisational barriers, psychological barriers, and market barriers.

Spring 2024 Action Learning Phase

Over a series of three highly engaging workshops, representatives from organisations that commission fitout projects considered how they can overcome the barriers, testing ideas in their organisations between workshops.

Summer 2024 Statement of Demand Phase

The last stage of the programme was a half-day workshop where participants co-created actions to be included in the project output document.

Download the Circular Fitout Lab insights document

This document sets out insights gained through the series in the form of:

A Statement of Demand outlining actions that other stakeholder groups can take to enable systemic change in the sector.
An Inventory of Actions that internal changemakers can take to overcome key barriers to incorporating circular economy in fit-out projects.

Download the statement