Exploratory Study on Circular Economy Approaches A Comparative Analysis of Theory and Practice

72 4 Case Description and Within-Case Analysis

consumers such as the police force, military personnel or others. During the life-

cycle, the laundry business is responsible for cleaning and maintaining the clothes.

The laundry business is responsible for disposing of the clothes at the end of their

product lifecycle. This usually done by incinerating them.

At the time Case Delta was interviewed (end of 2014), it was in the very early stages

of its transition to circular economy. The organization began this transition in 2013.

Case Delta has adopted two circular economy approaches as depicted in Table 10.

Table 10 Overview of circular economy approach of case Delta

Innovation Type Circular Economy Approach Organization

Delta

Product

Innovation

(Changes the

product)

Circular Supplies (e.g. creation of products which

are fully recyclable)

x

Resource recovery (e.g. creation of new products to

use up left-overs from the production line)

Remanufacturing (e.g. implementation of new

products which can be built from the reusable parts

of the original product)

Process

Innovation

(Changes the

process)

Circular Supplies (e.g. use of renewable energy for

the production line)

x

Organizational

Innovation

(Changes or adds

a business model)

Sharing Platform (e.g. enable customers to extend

the use of their products)

Product as a Service (e.g. sell the products access,

internalize the lifecycle management)

Product Life Extension (e.g. gather used products

and resell them if possible, replace certain parts of

the product)

The first circular economy approach the organization chose to implement is

circular supplies on product level. This means that it introduced a closed-loop,

biodegradable product line. The organization invented one yarn and one fabric

both of which are biodegradable. Hence, these two components are compatible for

a closed-loop production and are part of the biological cycle. To close the loop, the

organization collects its products after approximately 50 cleaning cycles and takes

them to an industrial composting facility. At the composting facility, the products

are transformed into humus which can be used as a nutrient for new resources.