Within the UK and Europe, Shaw has been actively working over the past year with stakeholders in the built environment to find out about what net zero and sustainability means to them, including through the critical lens of enabling a move to a Circular Economy.
A core initiative has been research conducted through strategy, transformation and innovation business, Insight Futures. A key objective was to identify the motivations and barriers for the adoption of circular business models including how to create, deliver and capture value for companies. This took to form of a two-phased survey with key stakeholders which looked at how might we de-risk the move to a circular economy for the built environment in Scotland, and in England and Wales.
Over 80 per cent of respondents in each phase of the survey cited that the Circular Economy was part of their company/organisation’s strategy. However over 60% in both phases of the survey, said that the benefits of a Circular Economy approach were not well communicated and understood.
The full Survey Reports for ‘How might we de-risk the move to a circular economy for the built environment, in Scotland,’ and ‘How might we de-risk the move to a circular economy for the built environment, in the UK‘ are available free of charge.
A circular economy approach is an alternative to the traditional linear approach – which is sometimes referred to as make, use, dispose. Instead, in a circular economy we keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them in use, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of each service life.
