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From Circular Economy Awareness to Action: What Helps Businesses Make the Transition?
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September 11, 2026

The circular economy has become an increasingly familiar concept for businesses across Europe. Yet understanding circularity and putting it into practice are two very different things. For many businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the challenge is not simply recognising the importance of using resources more efficiently, reducing waste or keeping products and materials in use for longer. The more difficult question is how to translate these principles into practical changes that make sense for their operations, customers and local context.

The SHARED GREEN DEAL project offers valuable experience in exploring this challenge. Through 24 local social experiments across 6 Green Deal priority areas, the project investigated how European Green Deal ambitions can become meaningful and actionable within local communities. Within the Circular Economy activities, Local Accelerator Hubs (LAHs) provided spaces where businesses and other local stakeholders could share knowledge, identify challenges, explore good practices and develop circular solutions together. Their experience raises an important question for the circular transition: what helps businesses move from knowing about circularity to actually putting it into practice?

Awareness is an important first step – but not the last
Awareness and knowledge are essential to the circular transition. But understanding circular economy principles does not automatically tell a business what it should change or how it should begin. Practical questions quickly emerge: Which circular opportunities are relevant to our activities? Where should we start? What knowledge or expertise do we need? Who else needs to be involved? How can an idea become a workable solution? This is where practical support and opportunities for learning become important.

Through the Local Accelerator Hubs, businesses were able to engage with circular economy practices, participate in workshops, access expertise and interact with other local actors. Rather than approaching circularity only as a concept to be understood, the process created opportunities to explore how it could be applied in practice.

Local context matters
The circular transition will not look the same everywhere. Businesses operate within different economic and social environments. Industries, available resources, infrastructure, stakeholder networks and local challenges vary considerably between places.

The SHARED GREEN DEAL Circular Economy experiments reflected this diversity. Local actions in Cyprus, France, Portugal and Slovenia explored circular business innovation in different contexts, addressing areas including construction and buildings, textiles, and food, water and nutrients. This diversity offers an important reminder: moving from circular economy ambition to implementation requires an understanding of local needs and opportunities.

Rather than assuming that one solution can simply be transferred everywhere, local experimentation provides an opportunity to explore what works, for whom and under which circumstances.

Collaboration opens new possibilities
Circularity also challenges the idea that businesses can always make the transition independently.

Products, materials and resources move through value chains involving many different actors. Decisions made by one organisation can affect the possibilities available to another. Infrastructure, regulation, knowledge and consumer behaviour can all influence whether a circular solution is viable. This makes collaboration particularly important.

Local Accelerator Hubs brought together businesses and other relevant stakeholders, creating spaces for knowledge-sharing, dialogue and the development of common solutions. Such interaction can help organisations see opportunities beyond their own boundaries. A challenge faced by one organisation may require expertise from another; a material considered a waste in one activity may have potential value elsewhere; and an idea may become more feasible when different actors contribute their knowledge and perspectives.

Learning by doing
One of the broader lessons emerging from SHARED GREEN DEAL is the value of experimentation.

Sustainability transitions are complex, and solutions cannot always be designed perfectly in advance. Local actors need opportunities to test approaches, learn from experience and adapt to challenges. This is particularly relevant to circular economy implementation. Instead of only asking businesses to understand what circularity means, practical experimentation allows them to explore what circularity could mean for their own activities.

For SMEs in particular, supportive environments for knowledge-sharing, collaboration and experimentation can help make the transition from an interesting concept to a more tangible opportunity.

From experimentation to lasting change
Local experiments can create knowledge, relationships and momentum. The next challenge is ensuring that their value does not end when an individual activity or project concludes.

The wider experience of SHARED GREEN DEAL highlights the importance of connecting local experimentation with longer-term processes, relationships and networks for continued learning. For the circular economy, this means thinking beyond individual workshops, pilots or business solutions. The knowledge exchanged between participants, connections established between organisations and experience gained through experimentation can provide foundations for further action.

The transition to a circular economy is not a single intervention. It is an ongoing process that requires learning, adaptation and cooperation between businesses, public authorities, communities and other actors.

Moving from knowing to doing
The experience generated through SHARED GREEN DEAL points to a simple but important distinction: knowing about the circular economy is not the same as being able to implement it. Awareness provides a starting point. Turning that awareness into action also requires businesses to understand their own context, access relevant knowledge, connect with other actors and have opportunities to explore and test potential solutions.

Closing the gap between awareness and implementation therefore means asking not only what businesses need to know, but also what enables them to act.

Creating the conditions for learning, collaboration and local experimentation can help turn circular economy ambition into practical action – and help ensure that the transition is shaped not only by policies and targets, but also by the people, businesses and communities putting them into practice.

Prepared by C.E.A. CIRCULAR ECONOMY ALLIANCE LTD (CEA),
a partner of the EU-funded SHARED GREEN DEAL project,
drawing on experience and insights generated
through the project’s circular economy activities.

 

References

 

Submitted By: Circular Economy Alliance Team

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