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Opportunities in circular economy promoting sustainable development 45

5. Discussion

5.3. Opportunities in circular economy promoting sustainable development 45

In circular economy, important aspects are to extend and intensify the use of products. It is all about giving products longer life to promote sustainable development (Geissdoerfer et al., 2020). To accomplish this, respondents said that common product standards for recycled material is needed. Also end-of-waste criteria to come away from classifying residual, usable material as end-of-waste.

However, also politicians must realise the need for such criteria to make change happen.

Circular economy highlight the word minimising, since mapping out leakages is core when striving for circularity (Geissdoerfer et al., 2020; MacArthur, 2013).

In the findings from respondent 23, it was clear that extraction of virgin stone is necessary to meet the future infrastructure needs. This means that minimising waste must be of even higher priority, for being able to use the already extracted material in loops. Hence, it is important to understand that it is not possible to only rely on reused and recycled material but to think in minimising terms. There were indications from the market analysis that recycled material can be more expensive than virgin stone material. This can either be ignorance of how to offer recycled and reused material, since with a take-back service profit will come, or the companies are not ready in other terms yet. Though, an important point for companies here is that offering recycled material is morally better and can ensure customers sustainability profiles, hence considering profit, people, and planet (Elkington, 1999). This means that companies in SSMI should invest in another market segment than today, namely the circular segment. To achieve this and create customers demand, educate them within triple bottom line mindset is needed. One important part then is to originate from the customers view (Normann, 2001), and not the organisation itself. Furthermore, better planning and common mass coordination can act as an extender for material, which respondents and the secondary data proposes for transformation. Also, to maintain the work with EPD’s is important for trying to reduce climate impact.

Companies have the chance to design the future business landscape, if catching the wave early (MacArthur, 2013). Both primary and secondary data findings show intentions about the need for refining business models to increase 3R’s.

The organisation that dares the most, will probably win most, as the situation appears right now. A disclaimer though is the customer and network perspective. Again, if not seeing or involving customers, how should a transformation be possible? MacArthur (2013) means that getting customers on board is a prerequisite for moving towards circular economy. Companies in SSMI must work with this more intense than today. As from the findings, respondents 5 and 6 said that their service centre must come closer to key account sales to understand customers better. Additionally, the earlier mentioned finding about broadened value proposition with increased involvement in customers’ business, can result in even more benefits.

MacArthur (2013) mean that businesses that control its supply chain also can influence the development of others.

Agenda 2030 have increased awareness among the three perspectives of sustainable challenges, expressed by Pagell et al. (2007) and from findings.

According to market analysis and findings from this study, Agenda 2030 is however not a driving force for organisations to improve sustainability perspectives. Forcing powers such as regulations, economical or other motivating incentives was claimed by respondents of the study to have more impact in this question. Awareness in combination with forcing powers can be seen as a beneficial driver for organisation to search for economical solutions within the 3R’s. Pastoors et al. (2017) highlights the necessity of measurement and decision making on where an organisation should invest and focus, which can be enabled by this awareness. However, economical perspective should maybe not be the main driving force for companies in the future, as a distinction from theory. Baden (2016) discusses the moral perspective and mean that ethical and legal responsibilities must be prioritised before economy, for trying to accomplish higher social responsibility.

Focus has in this study mainly been on economic and environmental sustainability, and less focus on the third perspective social responsibility.

Though, since the three perspectives intersects (Elliott, 2012), a contribution to economy and environment lead to a certain contribution in social sustainability as well. Implementation of a circular business model can in the future result in greater outcome in for instance working environment and more job openings.

Also, if the infrastructure could be built in an efficient way in society, more people can get quicker access to hospitals, banks, and public transports etcetera, which will improve everyday life for people.

5.4. Strategical considerations for circular business model innovation The choice of business model for an organisation is one part of strategy (Casadesus‐Masanell & Zhu, 2013). In order to achieve higher degree of circular economy, it is strategical beneficial to choose and innovate a circular business model. From findings it was found that organisations want to strategically invest in increasing the 3R’s. However, due to other obstacles it is reasonable to question, is this industry ready for it? As already mentioned, some challenges regarding geographical differences needs to be taken into consideration during the development of the business model.

From Coyne and Horn (2009) and Porter (2008) it is obvious that the competition at the market affects how the actors act and operates. Many respondents claimed that the competition is very high, and the pricing are very

tight. While Coyne and Horn (2009) and Porter (2008) emphasise behaviour and forces at the market in regard of competition, Teece (2010) emphasises to be aware of the prerequisites in to order to find competitive advantages. With this in mind, the hard competition does not necessarily have to be a problem, but it is of importance to maintain, and to act based on the circumstances. This performed market analysis could be one contribution to this awareness. Further, as Coyne and Horn (2009) and Porter (2008) elaborates in their research, organisations needs to evaluate and calculate for how the potential new implementation of CBM will impact the industry and how the competitors will respond.

The business models, both linear (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010) and circular (Ranta et al., 2018) have customer perspective included. The starting point is though from the companies’ perspective, i.e., what are the value proposition, what are segments and how does the relationships look like? Further with reasoning from Normann (2001), there is a shortcoming in these business models because he emphasises looking at the company through the eyes of customers. In findings it is showed that one obstacle that market is experiencing is the lack of customer demand for increasing activities of 3R’s and products in that section. Therefore, it can be beneficial to increase the customer perspective when developing the new business model. There are indications that reused and recycled material sometimes results in products with lower quality, and the customer have high requirement on quality in some area of use. Due to this, it is strategically beneficial to find areas of use for the material in products with lower quality demands. For instance, in a road project the quality of the highest layers cannot be disregarded, but in layers further down in the road, the possibilities are much higher. Here, industry standards such as AMA needs to be refined with higher permissiveness of alternative products.