Towards sustainable business: Leading change from the bottom-up

Abstract

The principles of sustainability and circularity are gaining ground in business, driven by market uncertainty and instability. Although many policies and strategies promote the circular economy from the top-down, there are few tools to help businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, overcome the challenges that hinder its implementation from the bottom-up. This article provides a structured bottom-up framework to accelerate the adoption of initiatives to achieve sustainable goals while transitioning to circularity. It adopts a conceptual framework development using a representation of the circular economy - the funnel metaphor - as a 'method' for exploring sustainability and circularity initiatives. The article categorises specific patterns in which initiatives can support the transition from traditional linear approaches to production and consumption to a more circular approach. By adopting a multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach, this framework introduces a novel way of characterising sustainable and circular initiatives that allows for minimising rebound effects and balancing trade-offs. As a result, companies can better articulate their actions to future-proof their operations and mitigate unsustainable impacts in a context of resource constraints.