\label{transition-agenda}
What are the primary interventions that form the core of the transition strategy design? b. How is the transition strategy designed? c. How much resources are involved? d. Who needs to do what? e. What are good indicators to measure the success of this transition strategy plan?
Addressed barriers impeding the transition to a circular economy
It was interesting to find out just why SMEs weren’t getting more involved. Regulation and lack of customer demand inhibited interest, and as with any small business, time was flagged as a big problem. This shouldn’t be considered a brush off. In small companies, the business owner would likely be responsible for leading the transition to a circular economy business model but for these people it’s often a struggle to keep on top of the day to day tasks. Owners also admitted they weren’t sure how to apply the concept to their work and worried that they might lack the creativity to develop a new business model. \cite{Guardian_2014}
Fussion, which is a community interest company (CIC) co-funded by the European Union having as its main objective to work with local entrepreneurs to develop new support mechanisms that would encompass life cycle philosophy and support business growth, conducted a survey with nearly 300 small and medium sized companies across the UK, France and Belgium, many of which were already interested in some aspect of sustainability. The findings of these survey indicated a number of barriers needed to be overcomed for the implementation of circular waste management. Some of the main barriers is the existed regulation according waste management and the lack of customer demand inhibited interest. Moreover, the concept was considered time consuming for the companies as SME owners struggle to keep up with their everyday work in their effort to keep their bussiness functional. Finally, the lack of knowledge in order to implement the new way of managing waste was pointed out from the owners.
Even though the implementation of circular waste management seems to have a long way to go until its actual realization, the benefits of a circular econ are measured in several studies. One of them is the study made from TNO which recorded the advantages of the impleentation of circular economy in the Netherlands. As predicted from the study it is expected that an expansion of circular economy for electronic and electrical products and the use of biotic waste streams would result in a total of 7.3 billion euros translated in around 54,000 jobs (citation of TNO!!!!). Thus, finding the right solutions in the aforementioned barriers and creatig a well estamblished agenda in the direction of circular waste management is an imperative. A list of actions need to be taken from the government towards a circular economy in the Netherlands and finally in the province of Utrecht, being the subject of this article, by the local authorities is given below:
Establish a clear and consistent strategy.
Create a coherent educational and research system.
Investigate the benefits and drawbacks of the existed legislation and reshape it in the direction of the new and desirable regime.
Provide with benefits the frontrunners of the new concept (e.g. subsides).
Create a promotion program and inform the publicextensively.
Investigate the cooperation possibilities with international actors.
We need to be able to offer coaching and mentoring and help to finance their ideas. From these leaders we’re already starting to see some new models developing. \cite{Guardian_2014}