Circular Economy

We are currently developing our ambitious Circular Business Models Revolution Project. We will bring businesses together to identify barriers, solve problems, and explore business opportunities in enabling circularity along value chains. These range from designing and selling products with longer lives, to alternative retail models like servitisation and leasing as well as online resale.

We welcome your participation. Partnering and sponsorship opportunities are available. If you are a BITC member contact your Relationship Manager for further information. If you do not know their contact details, log in to MyBITC to find them. If you are not part of The Prince’s Responsible Business Network, learn more about BITC membership.

Through a circular economy approach, businesses can take climate action, reducing their carbon emissions. Tackling emissions relating to the products they sell as well as the products and materials they buy from their suppliers, can have a huge impact. Scope 3 emissions, as they are known, tend to represent the greatest proportion, more than 70%, of a company’s carbon footprint⁴. Taking a circular economy approach can help reduce this figure.

Resources to help you take action

• Factsheet: Accelerating to Net-Zero with the Circular Economy (BITC member only resource). Download this factsheet to find out more on defining the circular economy, the lifecycle phases of a product, redesigning business models, practical steps to adopt circular approaches and read a glossary.

Adopting a circular approach to procurement allows businesses to become more sustainable while delivering business benefits. Circular procurement focuses on closing energy and material loops within supply chains, creating demand for example for remanufactured goods or reuse of materials. It creates long-term value by focusing not just on single transactions, but on the products and services suppliers offer their clients.

In 2022 Business in the Community will be developing joint statements of demand as part of a collaborative procurement project across northern Europe. These will be co-developed by procurers, setting out their future circular asks for three specific product categories. This will send a clear signal to the market of a shared demand, creating the basis for suppliers to invest and innovate to develop circular products which will meet that demand.

If you would like to participate in a circular procurement pilot, or be part of a joint statement of demands, contact your Relationship Manager if you are a member of BITC. If you do not know their contact details, log in to MyBITC to find them. If you are not part of The Prince’s Responsible Business Network, learn more about BITC membership.

Resources to help you take action

• Factsheet: Circular Procurement (BITC member only). This factsheet contains six simple steps for any business beginning its circular procurement journey.
• Factsheet: How Can Corporate Procurement Tackle the Climate Crisis? (BITC member only) This factsheet sets out how the role of the modern Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) and procurement leaders can support their businesses to act on climate change.
• Report: Improving the Sustainability of Professional Clothing sets out a framework of principles which procurers can adopt to select more circular options for workwear.
• Toolkit: The Business Case for Circular Procurement. This toolkit takes a closer look at some of the product categories organisations should address, gives practical steps on how to implement the principles in your business and makes the business case for doing so. It was written by the global energy and environmental consultancy Ricardo Energy & Environment, members of Business in the Community’s Circular Economy Taskforce.

BITC’s circular office initiative brings businesses together to learn, share, and try new ideas to bring the circular economy to life in their workplaces. It is about changing how we design, use and operate to eliminate waste and create more efficient, resilient spaces. These spaces will contribute to the long term sustainability of businesses and the wider economy and the positive wellbeing of occupants.

Resources to help you take action

• Factsheet: The Circular Office: A sustainable approach to the places we work (BITC member only resource). This factsheet call on organisations to sign up for the Business in the Community (BITC) circular office initiative.
• Report: The Circular Office Guide (BITC member only resource). The Circular Office Guide shows organisations how to retain the value of materials, by keeping them in circulation and eliminating waste in their workplaces. It contains useful information for everyone involved with offices including landlords, tenants, property managers, facilities managers, procurement teams and employees
• Toolkit: How To Deliver A Carbon Friendly Workplace Transition. A guide for businesses on delivering a carbon friendly workplace transition, post-COVID-19, that limits waste, protects the environment and benefits employee health and wellbeing.

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting is rapidly becoming mainstream practice for UK businesses. While several circular economy reporting frameworks exist, there is not yet a clear and common approach. This has proved to be a barrier to reporting being fully adopted. With the backing of BITC’s Circular Economy Taskforce, BITC has developed a useful set of metrics for measuring circular economy in organisations, and what streamlined but meaningful reporting should look like.
Our insights can be found in our How Circular?: Measuring and Reporting Circular Economy in Business report.

Our members show leadership through showcasing business best practice and thought leadership, as well as convening peer-to-peer learning sessions.

Business in the Community enables members to be at the forefront of creating a circular economy in the UK. We support businesses to share examples of how they are taking action and bringing the circular economy to life in their organisations.

Resources to help you take action

• A Guide to Recycling, Waste Management and Resource Productivity. This guide sets out the opportunities that rethinking resource and waste transformation can bring, explaining how to eliminate avoidable waste and turn ‘waste’ into ‘wealth’. For any business that recognises its responsibility to change, this is the starting point.

Case studies

We encourage businesses to share examples of how they are taking action and bringing the circular economy to life in their organisations.

• Advancing Circular Construction: case studies from the building and infrastructure sectors
• Circular Economy Case Studies from Anglian Water, Amey, ABP, Crown Workspace, Currys, Gilbert-Ash, Jaguar Land Rover, JLL, Packorang, PwC, Sodexo, Waitrose (BITC member only resources).
• Diageo and Encirc collaborate on sustainable Scotch bottle.
• Keenan Recycling: tackling food waste for a greener future.

1. Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2021) Completing the Picture: How the Circular Economy Tackles Climate Change.
2. Business in the Community (2022) Taken from research conducted for The Right Climate For Business: leading a just transition report but not included in final version.
3. Business in the Community (2020) Responsible Business Tracker® 2019/20 Insights Report.
4. Deloitte (no date) Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions: What you need to know.