Running Head: Sustainable development 0

Sustainable development
1/14/2019
Sustainable development 1

Introduction
Moving towards sustainable development is a global and social challenge that will take
efforts from national, local government, and international cooperation from researchers and
academics to carry out the best practices to motivate essential innovation and changes. They
should appraise economic benefits to develop new technologies, going green, and reinvent
the framework in a reversible and flexible manner to prosper innovations. There is a
developing need to change to move sustainable development as it influences environmental
issues, for example, water, and soil pollution, and biodiversity loss, excessive utilization of
land, air, and resources depletion. The economic challenges such as deregulated markets,
supply risk, flawed incentive, and ownership structures, which leads to excessive utilization
of economic and financial instabilities for the entire industry. To address this sustainability
and other concerns the concept of the circular economy has gained much significance on the
agendas of representatives (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017).

This has gained wide popularity, which aims to cooperate and contribute to the development
of the country. Sustainability issues are progressively incorporated into the plans and
strategies of the company. Indicators determining circular economy have increased
considerable interest throughout the economy. It becomes significant to evaluate circular
economy development because the United Commission is trying to assist U.K business and
customers to make the stronger innovation and circular economy. In order to attain the
circular economy, the package has been adopted to contribute and close the loop through
greater re-use and recycling. On the other aspect, the U.K. commission does not have any
appropriate tools to evaluate the circular economy at the major level. It is a resource-full
substitute for the economic model of regeneration, which strives in contributing to and
supporting the economy (Murray, Skene and Haynes, 2017). In the following, an effort has
been made to discuss the concept of sustainability and circular economy, strategies maintain
to attain sustainable development, and innovative means of promoting sustainability.

Ways to create a sustainable future

The circular economy is a paradigm for economic development, growth, and policy initiative.
It brings a multi-level transition towards cyclical, unsustainable, conventional framework by
reducing the intake of natural resources. It maintains with the aim to attain sustainable
development, which implies to maintain social equity, environmental quality, and economic
prosperity to the advantage of current and future generations. The circular economy is
Sustainable development 2

associated with the Sustainable development goals, which is approved by the United Nations
in 2015. These incorporate goals such as sustainable cities and communities, no poverty,
promotion of sustainable and inclusive innovation, and responsible consumption. There is
significant potential for maintaining more material flows, as the global economy has been
evaluated to be only 9%. It has been evaluated that it brings socio-economic and
environmental benefits and take benefit of rapid technological growth, which maintains
resource productivity and current development. It will bring enhancement to current
development with adequate benefits for employment opportunities. It would also assist to cut
greenhouse gas emissions in industries such as consuming aluminum, plastics, cement, and
steel (Tukker, 2015).

It has been expected to bring advantages to municipalities and industries because of the
reduction in the need for waste management, environmental consideration such as pollution,
and resource efficiency. It has immense potential to generate social as well as economic
benefits to maintain employment opportunities and welfare for improvement in trade-off
balances (Lieder and Rashid, 2016).

(Ghisellini, Cialani and Ulgiati, 2016).

There are many factors, which affect the efficient utilization of existing natural resources
such as environmental economics, industrial ecology, and ecological economics. They have
Sustainable development 3

maintained the balance of environmental burden of many democratic and industrialized

countries. They have developed the plan to establish and aimed to contribute recycling and
waste measures in a systematic and sustainable way. It is stated that China was the first
country to utilize the circular economy in the respect of waste management and resource
policy initiative. China’s engagement with the circular economy, which is formally accepted
by the central government. They should initiate a policy development towards a circular
economy and make a more holistic and ambitious approach. They should concentrate on
certain areas involving transport, logistics, sustainable framework, technical loops, and
serious action in order to attain systematic innovation. Despite the considerable progress in
policy initiatives, substantial efforts are required in order to avoid the barriers in the path
involving social, economic, and cultural barriers. The market barriers are attracted by a lack
of synergistic governmental involvements to accelerate the innovation towards a circular
economy (Genovese et al., 2017).

An integrated business models that have been evaluated to generate primary resource
advantages and unlock the gains by presenting immense employment opportunities in the
organization enable circular economy. These models have been diversified to an extent of
non-recyclable waste material into recyclable material to produce new technologies such as
3D printing, loop etc. (Hassan and Lee, 2015). It also determines a categorization of business
integrated models which is described as RESOLVE:

 Regenerate- It determines the shifting of renewable and recyclable energy and

material from non-recyclable energy.
 Share- It is stated as sharing and recycling industry as well as prolonging the
sustainability in the economy.
 Optimize- It is referred to as waste minimization, communication technology,
increased efficiency, and the use of data and information in a more similar and
systematic manner.
 Loop- It is stated as concluding the biological and technical cycle of material.
 Virtualise- It focuses on the direct and indirect impact of the circular economy on
promoting the culture in the economy.
 Exchange- It determines the innovation of new technologies and change in the
organization (Muñoz and Dimov, 2015).
Sustainable development 4

The first and foremost aspect is Regeneration, which states to recycle and biodegradable
paper cups and material, which can be utilized to not produce plastic products. They
developed conventional paper material, which is seemed tough to recycle and biodegradable
as they have a plastic layer inside it. The second aspect is improved and loop, which states
like the majority of plastics material normally goes out into the landfills, incinerators, seas,
oceans, or nature. It decreases the amount as plastic waste is collected, which is being
handled into the renewable plastic material. The organization main aim is to diversify the
waste to the production of usable raw material. The aspect states about the remanufactured
and manages to generate an advanced and effective business, which is helpful for the
economy. This may also help in energy conservation, increase in efficiency and productivity
of the organization. It also discusses the mobility in car ownership, which spends a lot of
money in purchasing cars and end up relatively little. They are offering an alternative way to
access diverse forms and make more efficient and potential market in the economy. The
Technological development also assists in getting immense opportunities for the circular
economy. For instance, technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Radiofrequency
Identification (RFID) assist in tracking the material flows, data, and collect information
across the economy (Joyce and Paquin, 2016).

Strategies to attain sustainable development

The strategies required to attain sustainable development, which helps in the transition from
the linear economic model to a more circular economy. This framework requires fundamental
changes in markets, user practices, technologies, and institutions. The circular economy is
designed to regenerate as a waste resource as possible, which assist to provide scalable and
practical opportunities to decrease the carbon footprint (Le Blanc, 2015).

 Prioritize regenerative assets- It ensured that the reusable, renewable, and non-toxic
resources are used as energy and material in a sustainable manner. They should
highlight the regeneration resources from transforming waste resources into
renewable resources (Lönnroth and Raviglione, 2016).
 Preserve natural resources- They should preserve, maintain, upgrade, and repaired the
resources to maximize the period. They should focus on reaching at the end of the
stage, which enabled the organization to save an evaluated reduction in CO2
emissions.
Sustainable development 5

 Use waste as a renewable resource- They should utilize the waste streams as a source
of renewable resource and recover waste for recycling and reuse. They should plan to
maintain to process the cow manure for the production of refined minerals and
biogas. This installation aims to produce waste material, which results in
approximately 1.2 million CO2 emissions (Schmidt-Traub and Shah, 2015).
 Design for the future- They should design their framework throughout the design
process in order to choose the appropriate material, design for extended future use,
and evaluate for a lifetime. They have a modular design to empower replacement for
material and components. This design enables deduction in CO2 emissions
throughout the lifespan.
 Cooperate to generate joint value- They should increase transparency and generate
joint value both internally and externally by working cooperatively within the
company. The Circle economy had associated with the Army Reshare to recycle
military uniforms to conduct an analysis of recycled uniforms, which shows a
reduction in CO2 emissions as compared to non-renewable materials (Mårtensson
and Westerberg, 2016).
 Renovate the business model- They should enhance the employment opportunities to
generate enhanced value and support incentives through integrated models that
develop the cooperation among associated and services. They should assist customers
to rethink upon the business idea and maintain greater satisfaction with the company.
 Integrate Digital Technology- They should track and enhance the use of resource and
strengthens relations among people by utilizing technologies and online platform that
deliver insights. Zipcar is an organization, which incorporate digital technologies to
develop convenient car sharing, which has shown to increase public transport, which
results in a reduction of CO2 emissions (Obersteiner et al., 2016).

The aspects of a circular economy deliver a variety of advantages that can help to attain
sustainable development goals and targets. The circular economy is currently operating to
maintain the links among the sustainable goals and prosper to cooperate with United Nations
and other organizations. They are moving a transition towards a circular economy, which
help to attain the goals worldwide. There is a great need for developing the policy statements
that concentrate on service deployment and product design. In general, consistent and
coherent policy mixes are essential to enhance the lifetime extension and utilization of natural
resources. These sustainable goals are much closer to the development of production and
Sustainable development 6

consumption framework. In the United Kingdom, a range of quality protocol has been
maintained to govern the utilization of specific waste streams for new and innovative
applications. It has been an attempt to maintain a balance between the protection of human
well-being and the environment and decreasing the regulatory burden with respect to the
circular economy (Jizi, 2017).

It is stated that companies seek new and innovative strategies to execute business models
depend upon re-manufacturing, reuse, and renovation to promote product life extension.
There are many major initiatives has to be taken which involve requirements for the
accessibility of material and other repair services, design standards for achievement of
product lifetime, and regulatory statements, which help to attain the sustainable development.
The framework for extended responsibility should be reformulated to encourage the goals of
sustainable material utilization and eco-design.

They should design their policies in a systematic way apart from the policies, which are
aimed at supporting the practices in a circular economy where innovations are hindered by
other path-dependencies. They should manage chemicals in the circular economy, which is
essential in the economy so that hazardous material does not entail risks to the environment
as well as humans. It is stated that in sustainable development, chemicals are used to enhance
the quality of products, which can be used in the future and can be re-used further. It also
decreases the utilization of hazardous material that needs to strive for sustainable
development. In order to maintain the risks of potential risks and information about the whole
product life cycle, this is a great challenge, which is continuously increasing the range of
hazardous material. It helps to assist the balance of security and sustainability within the
sphere of understanding the impact of renewable and convention resources. It would affect
the resources in a more effective and sustainable manner (Caiado et al., 2017).

The barrier to adopting sustainable development

There are several barriers, which can hamper the execution of green and circular economy
practices by small medium enterprises, which are discussed below-

 Environmental culture- There is considerable heterogeneity between small and

medium enterprises across different sectors as their capabilities and capacities are
normally similar in terms of development and organizational regime. The manager is
normally the CEO of the organization, which has substantial power on the strategic
Sustainable development 7

decisions of the organization. It is seen that some of the managers of SME may have
a positive attitude towards sustainable business, as other people might not. This
divergence of ideas and convictions towards sustainable business, which has been
attributed to various reasons in the available literature. The scopes of the small
medium enterprises are commonly ready to adopt the green practices, as well as
attitudes towards sustainable practices, depend on the sector in which they work
(Urbinati, Chiaroni and Chiesa, 2017).
 Financial barrier- The sustainable practices and green innovation has been
considerably cited in the available literature, which is one of the main hurdles to the
embracing of sustainability practices. It is stated that the upfront cost of any sort of
investment and the predicted period, which are particularly significant for small and
medium enterprises and generally more sensitive towards sustainable practices. It has
been shown in some situations that small and medium organizations lack the
financial assets to develop and maintain sustainability in the organizations. A survey
initiated in the United Kingdom that recycling of waste is less economical for people
that develop low-generation waste. There are also indirect costs such as human and
capital resource that organizations need to devote the entire time in order to make
environmental sustainability. These indirect costs establish a severe obstacle to the
execution of green innovation because of human capital and time management
(Despeisse et al., 2017).
Because of the financial barrier, appropriate funding and access to finance could be
crucial for small and medium enterprises to enhance the sustainability and innovation
in the organization. It is stated that smaller companies find it difficult to comprehend
and evaluate alternative funding options, for example, programmes and policies
conducted by the United Nations, grant by the government, and management
restrictions. SMEs, small business entrepreneur, bank financing face difficulties in
gaining the collateral security or guarantee required by the banks, which frequently
consider it as a risky business (Luthra, Govindan and Mangla, 2017).
 The non-existence of government support- It is stated that lack of proper
encouragement from government, effective and efficient taxation policy, and
provision of funding and opportunities. It is probably recognized as a substantial
barrier to the provision of environmental investments. On the other hand, the lack of
a strict regulatory framework probably affects the small business of the obligation to
Sustainable development 8

incorporate green and sustainable alternative solutions into their operations. The
aspect that small businesses are more effects strengthens this by local and regulatory
bodies regarding the development of their environmental consideration than a larger
business. In the absence of a proper effective mechanism, environmental
considerations are mostly directed by the employees and managers’ commitment
towards sustainability practices. Another difficulty is that most environmental
management is developed by large organizations, without taking into consideration
the small and medium sector. They should make a considerable effort to enhance the
management of the non-renewable streams. There is a progressive room for
development in the design and execution of waste legislation. In a study conducted
by the United Nations Commission, which predicted that lack of proper government
support and commitment such as recycling and recovery of waste is a major concern
(Adams et al., 2016).
 Information barrier- The lack of information about the advantages of the circular
economy has been recognized as another barrier to the execution of the circular
economy practices between small and medium enterprises. It has been indicated that
it neglects the potential financial gains from enhancing resource effectiveness,
productivity, and performance, which can be expensive for the organization. A
survey conducted by the FUSION, which is co-financed by the United Nations
Commission delivers valuable consideration into an understanding of the circular
economy. It is based in three countries majorly England, France, and Belgium, which
have demonstrated a consideration in sustainability issues. They are making
productive efforts to recycle and repair as various companies recognized waste
management as one of the sectors that could develop new opportunities (Pan et al.,
2015).
 Administrative burden- The innovation from the Small and medium enterprises to
green and sustainable practices normally gains administrative burden streamlining
from the environmental legislation. The administrative burden often demands time
resources and unaffordable financial resources reflects an important issue initiated by
the United Nations Commission. They are normally aware of the environmental
consideration as they lack in capability and appropriate knowledge to sustain with the
required requirement. It has been stated that it frequently depends on the external
experts in order to meet the obligation, which entails the extra cost and substantial for
Sustainable development 9

small business. It possibly harms the business and competitiveness in the

organization (Prakash and Barua, 2015).

Innovate ways to promote sustainable development for the circular economy

The Government economic policy has led to an initiative promoted by the National Action
Plan on a circular economy, which move towards the long-term adoption of principles of
circular economy. It would assist in generating jobs mainly for the section of youth and
women and provides a commitment, equality, and comprehensive growth, which depends
upon the development of small and medium enterprises, production efficiency, generation of
investment, innovation in new technologies, and reinforcement of the social-economic factors
in the organization. It would move up the waste management and concentrates upon
protecting renewable resources in the organization. It would also support in the circular
economy by encouraging business clusters and industrial symbiosis. It also makes an effort in
the production patterns of re-use, recycling, and restoring new and innovative products for
electronic devices (França et al., 2017).

It enhances the stakeholder cooperation among academia, civil society, and organization. The
SMART objective has been measured towards a circular economy, which monitors the
progress and success in the organization. It takes preventive actions in supporting and
promoting sustainable development with legislative interventions. It incorporates circular
economy consideration, which permits new legal definitions for renewable waste, by-
products, material for declassification of waste and standards in the organization. It maintains
the finance to execute the governmental intervention and demonstration of projects in the
organization. In addition, it enhances the understanding and knowledge, awareness, and
education with respect to attaining the success and growth of the organization. Prior to that,
governance setting has been established for the circular economy to execute implementation
and regulation to monitor progress and success (Ali et al., 2017).

They should attain the transition to a more circular economy and monitor the most significant
trends, which is essential to understand the several elements of the circular economy. They
should also monitor the progress to recognize the success factors in various countries and
regions as adequate action needs to be taken. They should regenerate and redesign, which
aims to maintain at highest value and utility. It should be coupled with the decreasing
worldwid4e resource which is continuously depleting. They should take serious action to encourage
re-use and motivate into turning by-product into another raw-material. They should innovate and
Sustainable development 10

optimize material to be recycled and re-used as the need to be designed properly disassembled
(Scheepens, Vogtländer and Brezet, 2016).

It is stated that everyone should understand the values and principles of the circular economy which
will contribute effectively to the organization. They should participate with business partners as
society is an integral part of the success of the economy. The companies are operating with a circular
economy to share each experience and maintain the partnership. They should implement by
developing countries, which contribute the way towards a protective and sustainable planet and create
employment. This action is possible with the help of research, development, and leadership. A linear
economy stresses great concentration on recycling and re-use as it is already adopted by many
companies. It also creates new employment opportunities in the circular economy, which is
sustainable and financially feasible in their period. Another strategy is maintaining economic
incentives that motivate producers to accept sustainable production and recycling strategies, which
leads to the distribution of green products. They should set a clear goal and maintain an action plan,
which helps in determining and achieving a road map in the organization (Smol et al., 2015).

Recommendation
 They should demonstrate education funding as the society should highlight the
significance and concentrate upon three factors development assistance, domestic
financing, and innovative financing development.
 They should maintain an initiative to respect education and maintained by the values
and principles of public funding development.
 They should government and association to raise public revenue, allocation to funding
development, and highlight spending on most marginalized sections.
 They should maintain the better and effective cost to deal with basic education to
households with an aspect of decreasing the economic as well as financial burden on
families.
 They should maintain the discussions among contributors and financial beneficiaries,
societies, and financial providers.
 They should develop the private sector and safeguard effective and efficient
regulatory development mechanism for accountability and transparency.
 They should force advocates for enhanced investment to specify the needs evaluated
at guaranteed financing to monitor and induce the partners to operate in a collaborated
manner and shared cost and revenue.
Sustainable development 11

 They should motivate government and associates to make plans and policies in global
learning mechanism.
 They should motivate the public government to report on development towards
national procedure goals so as to enhance responsibility and accountability.
 They should face all the hurdles in a more effective and efficient manner (Vezzoli et
al., 2015).

Conclusion
With reference to the circular economy as a renovated framework in which waste, emissions, and
energy system are reduced by closing energy loops. This can be attained through long-lasting repair,
remanufacturing, design, recycling, maintenance, and renovation. They should bring sustainability as
the stable incorporation of economic performance, environmental resilience, social injustice, and
advantage to both current and future generations. On a larger scale, the circular economy has become
the most emerging aspect for global thinkers and supporters around the world. They should have
examined the new and innovative opportunities with the help of a circular economy and contributes to
attaining sustainable development goals.

As, they have discussed the matters of ways to manage sustainable development, strategies to attain
sustainability, identify barriers, and innovative ways to encourage sustainable development. They
have to think about the benefit which could occur in production processes and sustainable
consumption. It will encourage the effective and efficient utilization of resources and decrease the
inefficient subsidies of fossil fuels. It is important to indicate the impacts of a better understanding of
the connection between the circular economy and sustainable development and their impacts on the
innovation framework developed in the organization.
Sustainable development 12

References
Adams, R., Jeanrenaud, S., Bessant, J., Denyer, D. and Overy, P. (2016) Sustainability‐
oriented innovation: a systematic review. International Journal of Management
Reviews, 18(2), pp.180-205.

Ali, S.H., Giurco, D., Arndt, N., Nickless, E., Brown, G., Demetriades, A., Durrheim, R.,
Enriquez, M.A., Kinnaird, J., Littleboy, A. and Meinert, L.D. (2017) Mineral supply for
sustainable development requires resource governance. Nature, 543(45), p.367.

Caiado, R.G.G., de Freitas Dias, R., Mattos, L.V., Quelhas, O.L.G. and Leal Filho, W. (2017)
Towards sustainable development through the perspective of eco-efficiency-A systematic
literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 165, pp.890-904.

Despeisse, M., Baumers, M., Brown, P., Charnley, F., Ford, S.J., Garmulewicz, A., Knowles,
S., Minshall, T.H.W., Mortara, L., Reed-Tsochas, F.P. and Rowley, J. (2017) Unlocking
value for a circular economy through 3D printing: A research agenda. Technological
Forecasting and Social Change, 115, pp.75-84.

França, C.L., Broman, G., Robèrt, K.H., Basile, G. and Trygg, L. (2017) An approach to
business model innovation and design for strategic sustainable development. Journal of
Cleaner Production, 140, pp.155-166.

Geissdoerfer, M., Savaget, P., Bocken, N.M. and Hultink, E.J. (2017) The Circular
Economy–A new sustainability paradigm?. Journal of cleaner production, 143, pp.757-768.

Genovese, A., Acquaye, A.A., Figueroa, A. and Koh, S.L. (2017) Sustainable supply chain
management and the transition towards a circular economy: Evidence and some
applications. Omega, 66, pp.344-357.
Sustainable development 13

Ghisellini, P., Cialani, C. and Ulgiati, S. (2016) A review on circular economy: the expected
transition to a balanced interplay of environmental and economic systems. Journal of Cleaner
production, 114, pp.11-32.

Hassan, A.M. and Lee, H. (2015) Toward the sustainable development of urban areas: An
overview of global trends in trials and policies. Land Use Policy, 48, pp.199-212.

Jizi, M. (2017) The influence of board composition on sustainable development

disclosure. Business Strategy and the Environment, 26(5), pp.640-655.

Joyce, A. and Paquin, R.L. (2016) The triple layered business model canvas: A tool to design
more sustainable business models. Journal of Cleaner Production, 135, pp.1474-1486.

Le Blanc, D. (2015) Towards integration at last? The sustainable development goals as a

network of targets. Sustainable Development, 23(3), pp.176-187.

Lieder, M. and Rashid, A. (2016) Towards circular economy implementation: a

comprehensive review in context of manufacturing industry. Journal of Cleaner
production, 115, pp.36-51.

Lönnroth, K. and Raviglione, M. (2016) The WHO's new End TB Strategy in the post-2015
era of the Sustainable Development Goals. Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical
Medicine and Hygiene, 110(3), pp.148-150.

Luthra, S., Govindan, K. and Mangla, S.K. (2017) Structural model for sustainable
consumption and production adoption—A grey-DEMATEL based approach. Resources,
Conservation and Recycling, 125, pp.198-207.

Mårtensson, K. and Westerberg, K. (2016) Corporate environmental strategies towards

sustainable development. Business Strategy and the Environment, 25(1), pp.1-9.

Muñoz, P. and Dimov, D. (2015) The call of the whole in understanding the development of
sustainable ventures. Journal of Business Venturing, 30(4), pp.632-654.

Murray, A., Skene, K. and Haynes, K. (2017) The circular economy: An interdisciplinary
exploration of the concept and application in a global context. Journal of Business
Ethics, 140(3), pp.369-380.
Sustainable development 14

Obersteiner, M., Walsh, B., Frank, S., Havlík, P., Cantele, M., Liu, J., Palazzo, A., Herrero,
M., Lu, Y., Mosnier, A. and Valin, H. (2016) Assessing the land resource–food price nexus
of the Sustainable Development Goals. Science advances, 2(9), pp.56-89.

Pan, S.Y., Du, M.A., Huang, I.T., Liu, I.H., Chang, E.E. and Chiang, P.C. (2015) Strategies
on implementation of waste-to-energy (WTE) supply chain for circular economy system: a
review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 108, pp.409-421.

Prakash, C. and Barua, M.K. (2015) Integration of AHP-TOPSIS method for prioritizing the
solutions of reverse logistics adoption to overcome its barriers under fuzzy
environment. Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 37, pp.599-615.

Scheepens, A.E., Vogtländer, J.G. and Brezet, J.C. (2016) Two life cycle assessment (LCA)
based methods to analyse and design complex (regional) circular economy systems. Case:
Making water tourism more sustainable. Journal of Cleaner Production, 114, pp.257-268.

Schmidt-Traub, G. and Shah, A. (2015) Investment needs to achieve the Sustainable

Development Goals. Paris and New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network,
44(7), pp.454-565.

Smol, M., Kulczycka, J., Henclik, A., Gorazda, K. and Wzorek, Z. (2015) The possible use of
sewage sludge ash (SSA) in the construction industry as a way towards a circular
economy. Journal of Cleaner Production, 95, pp.45-54.

Tukker, A. (2015) Product services for a resource-efficient and circular economy–a

review. Journal of cleaner production, 97, pp.76-91.

Urbinati, A., Chiaroni, D. and Chiesa, V. (2017) Towards a new taxonomy of circular
economy business models. Journal of Cleaner Production, 168, pp.487-498.

Vezzoli, C., Ceschin, F., Diehl, J.C. and Kohtala, C. (2015) New design challenges to widely
implement ‘Sustainable Product–Service Systems’. Journal of Cleaner Production, 97, pp.1-
12.