Social Economy Embedding Circular Economy: Theory, Practice, and Potential. An International Partnership

A key result is the first international, open-access collection on the circular economy, available through the PortailCoop digital library. This collection makes research comprehensively accessible and usable, provides examples of circular cooperatives and a practical toolbox. The toolbox includes workshop guides for a circular business model canvas, as well as business model and policy fact sheets in support of social economy organizations and policymakers.

A further central result is the development and empirical exploration of a research agenda on how social economy organizations shaped and adopt circular approaches, covering business models, governance, technology, and policy. An international survey showed a trend of new, usually small cooperatives that pursue circularity as a core value from inception, already established, larger cooperatives to explore circularity strategies both internally and by forming networks, and a potential for federations to facilitate circularity uptake.

The partnership has created an international network of researchers and practitioners working on circular economy and cooperatives, now extending to Asia and Africa, while reinforcing collaboration with Canadian partners. It also supported the next generation of researchers through training workshops and mentoring on data collection, paper development and writing of teaching cases.