Transforming business models: towards a sufficiency-based circular economy

Business model innovation for a circular economy has become core to contemporary sustainability research and practice, but does it go far enough? While circular economy initiatives have closed and narrowed resource loops to some extent, overall consumption continues to rise offsetting much of the benefits. A further paradigm shift is necessary, going beyond existing solutions, towards a broader societal-wide approach to deliver a sufficiency-based circular economy. That is, a society where excessive levels of consumption (and production) are curtailed at their root cause to better satisfy the health and wellbeing needs of the individual consumer, broader society and global environment. We present sufficiency examples in the food and clothing sector and explore how such approaches can augment existing circular economy solutions. We present a framework to better understand how industry, society and policymakers might collaborate more effectively in designing and implementing long-term initiatives for moving towards a sufficiency-based circular economy.