Recycling—the most widely promoted sustainability measure—is also where circular economy efforts most often collapse, argues new research. An analysis of 145 case studies has revealed that bolt-on recycling schemes, especially in packaging, repeatedly failed when disconnected from core business models. The findings raise questions about corporate strategies that rely on superficial fixes rather than embedding systemic change across design, operations, and consumer engagement.
- Recycling emerged as the most common failure point, especially when adopted as a bolt-on strategy without deeper organisational commitment.
- Case studies revealed that misaligned company purpose frequently undermined initiatives, particularly in packaging and reuse contexts.
- Financial and regulatory pressures created significant scalability challenges, disproportionately impacting smaller enterprises with circular economy goals.
- The study ‘Circular Economy and the Titanic Effect: Analysis of 145 Case Studies’ was published in Sustainable Production and Consumption
THE STUDY: The research examined 145 circular economy cases and found that 66 of them were failures and 37 potential failures. Failures were grouped into 16 categories, showing how weaknesses clustered around organisational, financial, and design issues. By integrating systems thinking with the 9R Framework, the analysis captured both published material and direct insights, revealing how misaligned priorities and structural traps undermined initiatives across multiple sectors.
- Interviews with 23 practitioners across five continents provided firsthand accounts of failure, complementing a wider set of published case studies from academic, industry, and grey literature.
- Recycling alone represented the single largest failure type, with packaging projects particularly overrepresented in this category.
- Authors included Miranda Braga Gomes Nogueira, Jeanette Simpson, Adam Christopher Snow, Fiona Charnley, Begüm Yontar Avcı, Kevin Brown, and Tanvir Ahmed.
- This research was supported by the UKRI National Circular Economy Hub
THE METHODOLOGY: The research combined a largescale case analysis with practitioner interviews to uncover failure patterns in circular economy initiatives. A total of 145 cases were assessed across diverse sectors and regions, supported by 23 in-depth practitioner interviews on five continents. Using the 9R Framework as an organising tool, the study classified failures into 16 categories, identifying both structural weaknesses and systemic traps that shaped outcomes across business models.
- Cases spanned multiple industries and geographies, reflecting broad international diversity across business-to-business and business-to-consumer contexts.
- The 9R Framework structured the classification, spanning strategies from refuse and rethink through to reuse, repair, refurbish, remanufacture, repurpose, and recycle.
- This systematic coding enabled a robust comparison of weaknesses across different contexts and industries.
CONSEQUENCES OF FAILURE: The collapse of circular initiatives carried severe consequences for businesses, regulators, and consumers. Recycling alone accounted for the majority of breakdowns, particularly in packaging, while reuse was the second most represented strategy in cases where problems were identified. These collapse points translated into reputational damage, regulatory gaps, and wasted investment, exposing the fragility of circular transitions when pursued as supplementary actions rather than embedded strategies.
- Smaller enterprises were disproportionately affected, with scalability and financing problems leading to collapse despite circularity being central to business models.
- Organisational misalignment and cost burdens appeared consistently across cases, undermining both commercial and policy-driven goals.
DETAILED FAILURE BREAKDOWN: Of the 145 cases assessed, 66 were identified as failures, 37 as potential failures, 17 as having no failure, and 25 as requiring further research. Recycling dominated the breakdowns, with packaging initiatives frequently collapsing. Reuse was the second most represented 9R strategy in cases where failure was identified, contrasting with earlier research that had emphasised low uptake. Failures clustered at the extremes of the 9R Framework, with recycling and recovery at one end and rethink/refuse initiatives at the other.
- Failures were distributed across 16 categories, but recycling and recovery were consistently overrepresented compared to repair or remanufacture.
- Organisational and financial barriers were frequently reported, reinforcing why smaller enterprises struggled more than larger firms to sustain initiatives.
