The findings suggest that the label “circular business model” is often applied too broadly in the research literature. A business model describes the logic through which an organization creates, delivers and captures value, whereas operations strategy concerns the long-term configuration of processes, capabilities and structural choices through which that logic is implemented. A firm can introduce repair, recycling, remanufacturing, traceability technology, more efficient sourcing or tighter supply-chain coordination without changing what it sells, who performs which role in the value chain or how it earns revenue. Such changes may advance circular objectives, but the study does not treat them as evidence that the firm has transformed its business model.

For the literature review, the researchers searched the Scopus database for English-language research and review articles published through January 2025. The search combined terms related to circular economies and business models with those referring to classification frameworks, including archetypes, taxonomies, typologies and patterns. It returned 232 records. After screening titles, abstracts and keywords for coherence, clarity and relevance, 38 papers were assessed through full-text reading, and 28 were retained for the final analysis. These included studies proposing or discussing circular business model classifications and several sector-specific or archetype-based contributions aligned with the research objective.

The researchers extracted 272 circular business model configurations from the selected articles and evaluated them using three dimensions drawn from established management literature: the unit of analysis and the boundaries around it, the elements that constitute the model, and the nature and level of interdependence among those elements. Each dimension was scored from 1, meaning the criterion was not met, to 3, meaning it was fully satisfied. The resulting composite scores ranged from 3 to 9 and were mapped onto five categories, from circular operations strategy through three ambiguous or intermediate classifications to circular business model.

Reliability checks were conducted before the full coding exercise. Five expert judges independently assessed 14 randomly selected archetypes, producing an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.773 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.596 to 0.906. Two researchers then independently double-coded a random sample of 65 archetypes while blind to each other’s scores; their agreement on composite scores was 0.883, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.815 to 0.927. Disagreements were resolved through discussion, after which one author completed the classification of all 272 configurations. The study’s 25.7% estimate should nevertheless be read as a conservative lower bound rather than an exact measure of conceptual error.

That caution is important because published descriptions varied greatly in length and detail. Eighty-four of the 272 archetypes, roughly one third, were described in fewer than 15 words. Some brief entries may have represented genuinely simple operational interventions, but brevity could also conceal business model features that a fuller description would have revealed. Consequently, some configurations near the business model threshold may have been classified lower because information was missing rather than because a transformation was demonstrably absent. When the authors used a more permissive, symmetric threshold, 38.2% of the archetypes were classified as circular business models, 40.1% as circular operations strategies and 21.7% as ambiguous. The exact shares depend on where the thresholds are placed, but genuine business models remained no more numerous than configurations better described as operational strategies.

Four boundary conditions emerged from the review. First, a circular activity such as repair, reconditioning, design or remanufacturing is not sufficient to qualify as a business model. The same activity can support either a business model or an operations strategy depending on how it is integrated into the broader value logic. A firm that performs repair internally to extend product life, reduce costs or support manufacturing may be reconfiguring operations. A redistributor or resale platform, by contrast, may organize repair and regeneration around commissions, intermediation or platform revenues for sellers and buyers, making those activities constitutive of its business model. The adoption of technology alone is likewise insufficient unless it transforms how value is created, delivered and captured.

Second, interaction with a network does not by itself make an initiative a business model. Supply networks used to optimize procurement, material flows, coordination or costs can remain part of a circular operations strategy. The network becomes a constitutive element of the business model when it becomes a primary source of the value proposition or a revenue-generating strategic asset. Third, consumer engagement must move beyond the traditional buyer-owner relationship. Circular business models can redefine customers as users of access or performance services, or as active partners in direct and reverse value chains. In access models, performance contracts and battery leasing, for example, customers pay for use or outcomes rather than ownership, while online resale can make customers active participants in transactions involving used goods.

Fourth, a circular business model should redefine value capture. The decisive issue is not whether revenue comes from selling a product or charging a service fee, but whether the firm appropriates value through the market by delivering circular value to external customers. Cost savings, lower waste-management expenses and internal efficiency gains do not meet that condition by themselves. The authors’ eight-firm evaluation included a cooperative whose vermicomposting initiative transformed livestock waste into a resource for horticultural production. Its upstream network and processing capabilities were genuinely reconfigured, but the resulting value remained inside the production system as avoided disposal cost. The protocol therefore classified the initiative as a circular operations strategy rather than a business model.

The researchers converted the four propositions into the CBM Decision Protocol, a sequential decision tree that evaluates one circular initiative rather than an entire firm. Its first step asks whether the initiative is a systemic configuration rather than a set of unrelated or merely co-occurring activities. The revised protocol requires at least two of three subconditions: a coherent circular configuration, coordination or interdependence among multiple elements, and structural reconfiguration of the firm’s operating boundaries. Its second step assesses whether value creation has been structurally transformed through upstream reconfiguration, downstream changes to the consumer interface, or both. The final step asks whether the initiative captures circular value through market-facing revenue rather than retaining it internally as savings.

The protocol was developed and refined through two formative evaluation cycles involving eight purposively selected firms from different sectors, organizational forms, sizes and countries. Selection also required a substantive circular initiative, variety in the type of initiative, and access to company documentation and a representative with direct responsibility for the work. The first version was applied to five firms, revised after interpretive difficulties appeared, and the second version was tested on three further cases selected for greater contextual diversity. Company documents and semi-structured interviews supplied the evidence. An external researcher, working blind to the authors’ classifications, independently assessed the three second-cycle cases and reached the same terminal classification in all three, including agreement on the same stopping point for the case classified as a circular operations strategy.

The eight-case evaluation was exploratory and intended to refine the diagnostic artifact, not provide statistical validation or a population estimate. The protocol was mainly applied by the authors, while independent blind validation covered only three cases. The findings also depend on the authors’ coding of published descriptions rather than direct evidence about the underlying firms. The study nevertheless offers a way for researchers, companies and policymakers to distinguish initiatives requiring a new value logic from those that improve operations within an existing model, with potential consequences for resource allocation, performance measurement and policy design. The classification itself does not establish environmental effectiveness: an operations strategy can still reduce material use, waste or emissions, while a business model can remain environmentally weak if it is peripheral or merely added to linear activity. Assessing scale, displacement of linear activity, rebound effects, material flows and energy use therefore requires a separate analytical layer.

Subject of Research: Design-science study distinguishing circular business model innovation from circular operations strategy

Article Title: Don’t call it a circular business model: establishing boundary conditions to clarify conceptual ambiguity in circular economy research

Article References: Iannuzzi, T., Corsini, F., & Frey, M. (2026). Don’t call it a circular business model: establishing boundary conditions to clarify conceptual ambiguity in circular economy research. Journal of Industrial Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44498-026-00185-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44498-026-00185-y

Keywords: circular economy, business models, operations strategy, circular business models, value creation, value capture, design science, conceptual ambiguity, corporate sustainability, research methods, call, circular

The study arrives at a politically charged moment. The European Union’s Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe” explicitly calls for new business models that support soil health, and regulators across the world are experimenting with carbon credits, biodiversity credits, and sustainability reporting rules that push companies to pay for ecological outcomes. Business models, in the widely used definition of Osterwalder and Pigneur, describe how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value. If policymakers want to incentivize land managers, the authors contend, they first need to understand precisely which types of value soil health investments produce, and who stands to benefit from them.

To build that understanding, Mathijs and Van Ruymbeke borrow the Total Economic Value framework from neoclassical environmental economics, refining it with the work of scholars such as Bartkowski, Davidson, and Pascual. The framework distinguishes output value, the aggregate worth of ecosystem services delivered by a system in a given state, from insurance value, the system’s capacity to keep delivering those services under disturbance and uncertainty. Output values split further into use values, covering consumptive goods like food and non-consumptive benefits like recreation, and non-use values, such as existence value and bequest value, the satisfaction people derive simply from knowing soil ecosystems persist for others and for future generations. The authors are careful to position the framework as a structured policy vocabulary rather than a neutral or exhaustive theory, noting that it must be complemented where labour, rights, power, and values that resist monetization are concerned.

From this foundation the researchers derive six complementary perspectives on soil-health-based business models. The productivist perspective treats soil as a form of capital whose improvement raises yields, cuts input costs, and increases land value, giving land managers an intrinsic motivation to invest. The ecosystem services perspective widens the lens to regulating and cultural services that benefit society at large, which can be monetized through compensation mechanisms provided that willing payers exist. The resilience perspective corresponds to insurance value: healthy soil reduces the likelihood or severity of adverse outcomes for farmers, lenders, insurers, and food processors alike, and the authors retain it as a separate category to make accounting, discounting, and long-term stewardship visible as policy concerns.

The remaining three perspectives push beyond conventional market logic. The non-use value perspective captures the benefit people obtain from the mere existence and preservation of soil ecosystems, including value for future generations, and therefore demands a commitment to benefits that may never be visibly realized. The intrinsic value perspective goes further still, asserting that soil possesses worth independent of any human preference, a view rooted in ecocentric and value-pluralist worldviews that echo the land ethic of Aldo Leopold and the agrarian essays of Wendell Berry. Finally, the social perspective, an addition not found in the original Total Economic Value framework, recognizes that soil health is a socially co-constructed concept: soil values are co-produced through natural properties, human labour, management history, and institutions, all shaped by power relations including unequal ownership and historical dispossession. This perspective emphasizes inclusive governance, community agency, and fair access to soil-related benefits.

Together, the six perspectives give economic content to the capital dimension of the broader soil security framework, which also includes capability, connectivity, and codification. Soil health investments, in this reading, are best understood as maintaining or appreciating a natural asset rather than merely boosting short-term productivity. The framework can help policymakers and financial institutions identify beneficiaries, construct credible investment cases, and design safeguards, supporting loans, guarantees, insurance arrangements, and payments for ecosystem services without assuming that every component of soil value must be monetized or collapsed into a single figure. Spatially explicit indicators can partly operationalize the idea: recent Australian research has combined soil functions, services, and threats to estimate soil management capital per hectare, and comparisons between managed phenosoils and least-modified genosoil references can reveal degradation or improvement over time. Measures such as pH-regulation costs, nutrient stocks, and available water capacity can guide targeting, though the authors stress these methods cannot capture every value perspective and should complement, not replace, plural indicators and public deliberation.

Each perspective also implies distinct policy tools and distinct failure modes. Under the productivist view, incentives should in principle be unnecessary if income gains cover the investment, but three problems commonly arise. Returns may be delayed, as in the transition to organic farming, justifying temporary subsidies whose level and duration are context-specific. Returns may be too small to cover the investment, requiring permanent additional income streams or investment subsidies. Or land users may lack the equity or credit access to invest at all, a case where government guarantees can lower lenders’ risk. The ecosystem services perspective, by contrast, relies on payments and markets such as the EU Emissions Trading System and the emerging biodiversity credit market, reinforced by mandatory rules like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. Here the authors flag three complications: interventions may not consistently deliver the expected services, which argues for hybrid schemes blending practice-based and performance-based payments; services are often co-produced, making individual contributions hard to isolate; and credits frequently fail to reflect true opportunity costs, since a one-off carbon payment does not cover the ongoing investment needed to maintain soil carbon, whose marginal gains also decline over time.

The resilience perspective exposes a classic coordination failure. Because every actor benefiting from reduced risk might be willing to pay a premium, uncoordinated action invites free-riding, over-subsidization, or under-subsidization, and unlike discrete ecosystem services, risk cannot be decomposed among beneficiaries. There can also be a direct trade-off between income and resilience, as when crop diversification forces less profitable rotations that buyers, who typically purchase only a single crop, are reluctant to support with broader contracts. The non-use and intrinsic value perspectives, lacking conventional market returns, instead call for public expenditure, intergenerational protection, legal minimum standards such as the EU Soil Monitoring Law, and cultural and educational programmes that revitalize land-based knowledge and sustain an ethic of care. The social perspective demands relational and institutional incentives: peer-exchange platforms such as EIP-Agri, adaptive policy frameworks, grants for community projects, open-access knowledge tools, and participatory research funding, alongside attention to tenure security, bargaining power, transaction costs, and benefit sharing, particularly where external investors might shift control away from local actors.

The article’s central message is deliberately uncomfortable for policymakers seeking a silver bullet: no single instrument can serve all six perspectives effectively. Soil health is shaped by multiple, overlapping values that rarely occur in isolation, and different actors may hold diverse or simultaneous values at once. Effective governance therefore requires a flexible, differentiated strategy that supports land managers with targeted, easily adoptable measures integrated into their business models, while guarding against over-subsidization and free-riding where benefits are non-excludable, and ensuring coordination, accountability, distributional safeguards, and adaptive learning. The authors also warn of the risks of tokenism and co-optation, in which community-led soil initiatives are superficially adopted without genuinely empowering communities, and note that scaling social innovations beyond pilot contexts remains a persistent challenge. By clarifying how soil as a stock can generate different flows of value, and how management can make that stock appreciate or depreciate, the framework offers decision makers a foundation for designing inclusive and adaptive policies, one that adds economic substance to soil security while preventing capital valuation from becoming the sole account of what soils are and why they matter.

Subject of Research: Value-based frameworks for soil health business models and soil policy design

Article Title: Soil health-based business models: perspectives and policy implications

Article References: Mathijs, E., & Van Ruymbeke, K. (2026). Soil health-based business models: perspectives and policy implications. SOIL, 12(2), 835-840. https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-12-835-2026

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.5194/soil-12-835-2026

Keywords: soil health, soil security, business models, ecosystem services, total economic value, soil policy, resilience, carbon credits, biodiversity credits, EU Soil Deal for Europe, natural capital, social innovation

Now, researchers Daniel Guzzo and Daniela C. A. Pigosso of the Technical University of Denmark have published, in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, the first systematic map of how specific circular economy business model patterns connect to the rebound mechanisms that undermine them. Their study, published as open access research, does something the field has long lacked: instead of cataloguing isolated case studies of rebound, it builds a semantic network that traces the causal pathways linking design choices in circular business models to the economic and behavioral chains that activate rebound effects. The result is both a diagnostic tool for companies and a sobering structural insight about the circular economy itself.

The core of the method is an interpretation-based semantic network analysis, a technique that maps relationships between concepts within a body of knowledge rather than merely counting how often they co-occur. The researchers began by constructing a causal ontology, a formal specification of the concepts, categories, and relationships that structure the domain, indicating how change propagates through it. In their framework, a circular economy business model pattern is performed by an actor, which stimulates a trigger or a driver; that trigger then activates a rebound mechanism. Triggers are the factors that set rebound mechanisms in motion, such as freed-up budget or new revenues, while drivers are regulators that amplify or dampen the ultimate effect, such as social values or the substitutability between consumption options.

To populate the network, the team analyzed the most comprehensive empirically supported catalog of circular economy business model patterns in manufacturing to date: 24 industry-generic patterns, from collaborative services to circular supplies, accompanied by 34 complementary pattern cards. Using qualitative content analysis, they dissected each pattern description to identify the changes it causes in production and consumption dynamics that could stimulate a trigger or driver. Each stimulation instance was characterized by the specific change involved, the trigger or driver it represented, the actor affected, and the type of evidence, whether explicitly stated in the text, interpretively inferred, or logically extrapolated from a similar context. On the other side of the ledger, the researchers deconstructed a state-of-the-art catalog of 26 rebound mechanisms into their constituent triggers, drivers, and actors, allowing both knowledge domains to be joined within a single causal structure.

The scale of the resulting network is striking. The analysis charted 117 distinct instances of trigger or driver stimulation within circular business model dynamics, alongside 55 instances of rebound mechanism activation. Fifteen of the 24 business model patterns connect to five or more distinct triggers and drivers, and crucially, this high connectivity transcends strategy types. Patterns focused on effectiveness, meaning enhanced value creation at constant resource flows, showed the highest average number of connections at 6.54, but efficiency patterns averaged 5.2 and even the single sufficiency pattern, which aims to reduce the need for value creation altogether, showed six. In other words, no strategic intent is immune: the potential for rebound appears to be an inherent structural property of circular business models, not an occasional side effect of poor design.

Perhaps the most revealing finding is what dominates the network. Economic and financial factors account for 60 percent of all identified connections between business model patterns and triggers, with 70 of 117 connections, and they activate the highest number of unique rebound mechanisms, 18 in total. The most frequent individual triggers are revenues and operational costs. The network also shows that the type of actor matters: the manufacturer or service provider and the company as a customer are the two most central nodes, with 33 and 31 outgoing connections respectively, and their links are overwhelmingly economic. Individuals, by contrast, show a more even distribution between economic factors and consumer choices, reflecting that companies are targeted with tangible financial benefits while consumers are offered intangible ones like flexibility and convenience, which are themselves well-known rebound triggers.

The map also exposes blind spots. Several enabling patterns, which reinforce other patterns rather than acting directly, do not appear in the network at all because their influence on triggers is never articulated in the source texts. Some triggers identified in the business model literature, such as space savings and moral hazard, have no corresponding mechanism in the rebound catalog, while crucial factors known to drive rebound, such as excess of supply, are absent from the business model descriptions. Not a single trigger stimulation was associated with socio-cultural influences, even though such factors have been linked to rebound elsewhere. The authors attribute this asymmetry to a deep dependence on a value-capture paradigm in business model research and on neoclassical economics in rebound research, producing what they call a form of rebound myopia, a limited capacity to even communicate about rebound beyond a narrow set of economic factors.

To demonstrate the practical value of the network, the researchers worked through a detailed use case: the collaborative services pattern, in which companies offer shared access to products through a platform. In a hypothetical business-to-consumer scenario, the service provider may generate additional revenues through platform fees, potentially activating output, factor substitution, and economies-of-scale rebound mechanisms. Individual renters may benefit from increased convenience, which can activate motivational consumption and motivational substitution, while reduced product access costs free up budget that may trigger further mechanisms. With these pathways laid out, a company can devise strategies to address the specific triggers before they are released, rather than discovering the rebound after the fact. The authors suggest even concrete monitoring approaches, such as tracking damage reports per use against historical averages to detect moral hazard in car-sharing fleets.

The researchers are careful about what the network can and cannot do. Although it employs quantitative measures such as connection counts, a node’s prominence indicates theoretically relevant associations, not actual magnitude or likelihood in a specific case; a single, less-connected pathway could still have a disproportionately large impact in context. The focus on generalized archetypes also blurs the nuances of real cases, since a trigger like decreased cost can unfold very differently depending on whether it affects a renter’s budget or a lender’s revenues. The framework is intended for proactive early-stage reflection, revealing the scope of potential systemic responses, and its authors point toward simulation-based approaches and dynamic modeling as natural complements for exploring temporal dynamics and contextual dependencies the map cannot capture.

The broader implications reach beyond circular business models. The authors argue that the same causal ontology and analytical procedures can be adapted to examine rebound in other sustainability interventions, including product design, socio-technical transitions, and policy tools, and that the lens can even be inverted to deliberately stimulate secondary benefits, which share similar causal structures. By systematically connecting constructs that have long been studied in isolation, the study challenges the proposition that rebound effects are not necessarily tied to specific circular strategies, and it pushes the field from classifying individual cases toward identifying patterns based on relational knowledge. For a discipline that has often leaned on a win-win narrative, the message is uncomfortable but constructive: the very benefits that make circular business models attractive, from reduced costs to new markets, are frequently the same triggers that activate rebound. Making those pathways visible, the researchers contend, is the first step toward designing them out, and toward circular interventions that finally deliver their full sustainability promise.

Subject of Research: Mapping the causal associations between circular economy business model patterns and rebound effects using semantic network analysis

Article Title: Bridging circular economy business models and rebound effects: Mapping systemic associations with semantic network analysis

Article References: Guzzo, D., & Pigosso, D. C. A. (2026). Bridging circular economy business models and rebound effects: Mapping systemic associations with semantic network analysis. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 30(4), 1629-1643. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44498-026-00110-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44498-026-00110-3

Keywords: circular economy, rebound effects, business models, semantic network analysis, sustainability, causal ontology, triggers and drivers, industrial ecology, sustainable consumption, manufacturing, rebound mechanisms, circular strategies

The scientific stakes are high. Previous modeling work has demonstrated that only extraordinarily high recycling rates, on the order of ninety-five percent, would allow plastics to remain within their share of climate and biosphere boundaries, and even that may be unrealistic without complementary reuse strategies and alternative carbon feedstocks such as biomass and CO2. Circularity, in other words, cannot be achieved through recycling alone or by isolated firms. It requires rapid, coordinated scaling across complex value chains involving manufacturers, recyclers, logistics providers, brand owners, and regulators. The problem is that plastics value chains are deeply fragmented and riddled with information asymmetries: processors often do not know the exact composition of recyclates, brand owners cannot verify whether secondary materials are free of hazardous additives, and reusable packaging systems struggle with return logistics, cleaning, and traceability. Digital platforms, the study contends, are emerging precisely to close these gaps.

The research team, led by Sophia Botsch of the German Plastics Center SKZ-KFE gGmbH and Julian M. Müller of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, conducted a qualitative case study built on eleven semi-structured expert interviews, each lasting roughly sixty minutes and conducted online between November 2025 and January 2026. The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, anonymized, and analyzed in MaxQDA following the Gioia methodology, an iterative coding approach that moves from informant-centric first-order concepts to second-order themes and finally to aggregate theoretical dimensions. Secondary material, including descriptions of material and information flows on the platforms, supplemented the interviews. The researchers drew on Resource Orchestration Theory, which describes how firms create value through three sequential activities: structuring resources by acquiring, accumulating, and divesting them; bundling them into stable, enriched, or pioneering combinations; and leveraging those bundles in product markets by mobilizing, coordinating, and deploying them. Applied to platform ecosystems, these activities extend beyond firm boundaries, requiring platform owners to attract heterogeneous participants, design governance and incentive mechanisms, and continuously adapt algorithms, rules, and boundary resources.

The central empirical contribution is the identification of three distinct platform archetypes in the plastics industry: Reusable Packaging Trackers, Reuse and Resale Hubs, and Data Platforms. Each archetype orchestrates a different kind of resource and enables a different circular business model. Reusable Packaging Trackers focus on physical asset management. Their structuring activities involve organizing return and purification infrastructures and standardizing packaging materials. Bundling occurs when the platforms combine physical containers with tracking technologies such as QR codes and Internet of Things sensors, together with logistics data, to guarantee quality and hygiene. Leveraging means scaling circulation loops across regional supply chains, effectively replacing single-use packaging with high-frequency reuse systems. As the founder of one such platform explained, the model amounts to packaging as a service: the platform delivers the packaging, collects it, rinses it, stores it, and issues it again, so customers need not worry about any of the logistics.

The numbers reported by these operators illustrate why cycle speed matters as much as cycle count. The founder of one Reusable Packaging Tracker noted that their best-performing container was used 365 times, while the average container achieved twenty uses, yet half of all containers were used fewer than ten times. In circular economy terms, a fast cycle is crucial: a container that turns over only once a year is, even after a decade, hardly better than a disposable one. This insight connects directly to the biophysical argument at the heart of the study. By orchestrating return, purification, and tracking, these platforms operationalize the principle of keeping products and materials at their highest utility and value for as long as possible, leveraging product life-extension patterns that directly reduce the carbon intensity and linear throughput of the plastics system.

Reuse and Resale Hubs, by contrast, orchestrate market mediation for secondary materials. Their structuring work involves integrating diverse material providers and rigorously standardizing data on material properties and quality. Bundling centers on matching industrial demand with available recyclate supply by combining material origin data with risk management services. Leveraging is expressed through optimized pricing and demand saturation, allowing the platform to act as a digital intermediary that lowers barriers to entry for firms seeking recycled plastics. The market for recycled materials, one platform founder observed, is highly diversified and complex despite not appearing so from the outside, and the main customer benefit is faster orientation within it. These hubs attack the critical market failure of information asymmetry. By standardizing quality data and certifying material providers, they make high-quality secondary material scalable. Notably, because many marketplaces cannot themselves guarantee material quality, they build trust incrementally: tests are carried out quickly, buyer feedback is fed back into the system, and data accumulates over time, steadily raising the probability that a given material will suit a given processor.

The third archetype, Data Platforms, orchestrates the intangible data layer of the value chain. Structuring involves collecting product data across the entire lifecycle into standardized formats. Bundling emphasizes interoperability and regulatory compliance, ensuring that information can flow securely between organizations. Leveraging is achieved by reducing information asymmetries across whole sectors, enabling complex circular strategies, and helping participants meet global reporting requirements through tools such as digital product passports. One data platform founder summarized the philosophy bluntly: you cannot circularize what you cannot measure. Many of these platforms were not conceived as circular economy ventures at all; rather, the circular agenda pushed them toward digital product passports. By using data customers already possess, creating transparency on top of it, and automating processes such as reordering, invoicing, and account reconciliation, they map the chemical identity of materials without forcing firms to surrender commercial secrets, often using confidentiality-preserving technologies such as blockchain and zero-knowledge proofs.

The theoretical implications are significant. First, the study shows that in circular ecosystems, orchestration is not a firm-centric endeavor but a meta-organizational capability: platforms must structure and bundle resources, such as material quality data and complementor networks, that they do not legally own. Their value proposition rests on aligning the heterogeneous motives of recyclers, brand owners, processors, and service providers with regulatory compliance. Second, circular business model patterns such as resource recovery and product life-extension are revealed to be dynamic outputs of specific orchestration moves rather than static design categories. Third, the research addresses a well-documented gap in platform scholarship, where business-to-business platforms remain understudied compared to consumer-facing ones. Industrial network effects, the authors find, differ fundamentally from consumer network effects: they are driven by technical standardization and regulatory compliance rather than social interaction, which means platforms must act as institutional anchors that pioneer resource combinations previously considered economically unviable.

Perhaps the most forward-looking finding concerns convergence. Although the three archetypes currently evolve largely in isolation, early signs of integration are emerging. The chief executive of one data platform described how the digital product passport is foreseen as evidence supporting sales on secondary-material marketplaces, allowing buyers of recycled materials to prove that goods genuinely come from second-life sources. Reusable packaging that is digitally monitored effectively carries a digital twin comparable to a product passport, and detailed composition data improves the feasibility of end-of-life treatment. The study envisions these platforms combining into a digital ecosystem in which data and materials cross platform boundaries, generating synergies no single actor could achieve alone. For managers, the message is to choose strategies aligned with their archetype, monetize circular network effects rather than mere transaction fees, and measure success not in gross merchandise volume but in displaced virgin material throughput. The authors caution, however, that many platforms still depend on venture capital or public grants, that high-resolution life cycle assessment data quantifying net environmental benefit is lacking, and that rebound effects from cheaper recyclates could erode gains. The transition to a circular carbon economy, they conclude, cannot be achieved by individual platforms, but platform-mediated ecosystems may supply the coordinated, large-scale intervention the plastics industry urgently needs.

Subject of Research: How B2B digital platforms orchestrate resources to enable circular economy business models in the plastics industry

Article Title: Orchestrating resources for recycling – how digital platforms enable circular economy business models

Article References: Botsch, S., & Müller, J. M. (2026). Orchestrating resources for recycling – how digital platforms enable circular economy business models. Journal of Industrial Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44498-026-00179-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44498-026-00179-w

Keywords: circular economy, digital platforms, plastics industry, recycling, resource orchestration theory, business models, digital product passports, industrial ecology, supply chain management, reusable packaging, planetary boundaries, B2B marketplaces

The scale of the material is far from trivial. An adult horse of roughly 500 kilograms produces an estimated 20 to 31 kilograms of manure and bedding per day, amounting to some 9 to 11 tonnes annually. In regions with dense horse populations, those figures rival municipal bio-waste streams. The County of Wesel in Germany’s Lower Rhine basin, for example, counts more than 8,500 horses alongside 458,000 inhabitants; in 2024 the area collected 32,700 tonnes of bio-waste and 23,300 tonnes of green waste, while horse manure is estimated at around 75,000 tonnes. Yet because many stables sit far from farmland that could recycle those nutrients, manure increasingly generates disposal costs and storage constraints rather than agronomic value.

Chemically, horse manure is a distinctive feedstock. Pure manure contains about 1.0 to 1.7 percent nitrogen on a dry basis, much of it water-soluble and plant-available, along with 0.5 to 1.3 percent phosphorus as P2O5, roughly 1.1 percent potassium as K2O, and 84 to 95 percent organic matter. Its carbon-to-nitrogen ratio typically ranges from 20:1 to 32:1, but bedding materials such as straw or wood shavings can push mixtures above 50:1. That matters agronomically: high C:N materials trigger net nitrogen immobilisation in soil, reducing short-term plant-available nitrogen and potentially depressing yields. If manure is marketed as a fertiliser substitute, customers may perceive weak or even negative fertiliser effects, undermining willingness to pay. The bedding is therefore not a passive bulking agent but a design variable that shapes composting behaviour, nutrient dynamics, and ultimately market positioning.

Controlled composting resolves many of these problems. Thermophilic phases thermally degrade pathogens, parasite eggs, and weed seeds, while microbial activity stabilises labile nitrogen compounds into more predictable, plant-available forms. Finished horse manure composts reported in the literature contain total nitrogen of 1.7 to 2.3 percent, phosphorus up to 1.3 percent, potassium around 1.2 percent, and a near-neutral pH of 6.4 to 6.7, with the C:N ratio falling from an initial 27.3:1 to roughly 15.9:1 and moisture dropping to between 8 and 15 percent. Practical benchmarks, such as the German Organic Waste Ordinance, converge on sustaining temperatures above 55 degrees Celsius for more than two weeks. Studies of small-scale composting of manure with wood shavings show that weekly turning improves hygienisation uniformity, since outer pile layers can otherwise remain insufficiently sanitised. That quality assurance is what opens quality-sensitive horticulture, landscaping, and growing-media markets to manure-derived products.

Emissions, however, constitute the central technical trade-off. Composting generally suppresses methane relative to passive storage because aerobic conditions inhibit methanogenesis, but poorly managed piles can still release considerable methane. Meanwhile, ammonia volatilisation and nitrous oxide emissions can rise, eroding the product’s nitrogen content and contributing to eutrophication and climate forcing. Turning aerates the pile and cuts methane, yet can simultaneously increase ammonia losses by exposing ammonium-rich zones during thermophilic, alkaline phases. Research on dairy manure even shows that pile mixing can raise total measured greenhouse gas emissions while lowering methane alone. The authors conclude that good composting is not a compliance exercise but a core production competence: process control determines hygiene, nitrogen retention, odour, and customer-perceived value. Facilities with optimal aeration and exhaust gas treatment are preferable, which favours centralised processing where horse density or cooperative logistics allow efficient feedstock aggregation.

The systematic EU mapping reveals a structured, application-driven compost market in which soil improvement dominates, followed by fertilising functions and a smaller but meaningful segment for growing-media components. Solid composts prevail, while compost-biochar blends and vermicomposts are increasingly documented. Application fields extend beyond agriculture into horticulture, landscaping, urban greening, engineered soils, remediation, and green roof substrates. That breadth is strategically significant for horse manure, because peri-urban stables are often spatially closer to urban green infrastructure markets than to bulk agricultural outlets, reducing transport costs and enabling circularity branding that raises willingness to pay. The trade-off is that these markets demand higher product consistency and safety, reinforcing the case for controlled composting and rigorous quality management rather than passive pile storage.

Organisational form emerges as a decisive determinant of economic viability. Centralised private plants exploit economies of scale and professional quality assurance but require collection logistics and sufficient horse density. Municipal and public-private systems monetise composting partly through avoided disposal costs and internal use of compost in public green spaces, aligning well with the peri-urban geography of horse keeping. Decentralised models suit small holdings with limited investment capacity, where the business case rests on avoided container rental, haulage, and disposal contracts rather than product sales, though governance mechanisms are needed if products leave the site. Notably, the literature review found no documented cases of co-composting horse manure with municipal bio-waste, despite the apparent synergy: blending manure with kitchen and garden waste would raise nitrogen and potassium in the finished compost and could improve the economics of both streams.

Product differentiation offers the most promising frontier. Vermicomposting can unlock premium horticultural markets through higher microbial activity and nutrient availability, but it demands prior hygienisation and careful process management, raising complexity and risk. Compost-biochar blends present a more scalable strategy: biochar incorporated during composting improves nutrient retention and microbial habitat, and its carbon can persist in soils for decades to centuries, qualifying as a plausible carbon dioxide removal pathway. Voluntary carbon markets have begun recognising biochar-based removals, suggesting that carbon monetisation is more credible in compost-biochar models than in composting alone, provided monitoring, reporting, and verification frameworks are in place. Formulation design also follows application logic: fertiliser-oriented composts target C:N ratios of 8:1 to 12:1, soil improvers sit between 12:1 and 18:1, and carbon-storage or remediation blends exceed 18:1, often above 30:1 with woody biomass or biochar.

Regulation threads through every business model. Under the EU Fertilising Products Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2019/1009) and national frameworks such as Germany’s Fertilizer Act, Fertilizer Ordinance, and Bio-waste Ordinance, requirements for storage capacity, spreading periods, and waste classification shape what is legally and commercially feasible. Directive 2008/98/EC mandates separate biowaste collection, and the EU Soil Strategy for 2030 raises demand for organic matter inputs in degradation-prone regions such as Southern Europe. The authors’ central message is that viable models must treat regulatory conformity and quality assurance as core capabilities enabling market access, not external constraints. Horse-specific data on emissions, pharmaceuticals, and antibiotic resistance genes remain sparse compared with cattle and pig systems, and systematic evaluation of decentralised peri-urban systems is scarce. Future work combining horse-specific process monitoring with economic modelling across organisational structures would strengthen the evidence base for policy and investment. The larger conclusion is striking: Europe’s horse manure problem is really a design problem, and its solution lies in engineering purpose-built compost products, organisational models, and carbon strategies around the material’s distinctive chemistry.

Subject of Research: Business models for utilising horse manure through compost-based value chains in the European Union

Article Title: Business Models for Horse Manure Utilisation in the European Union: Compost-Based Products, Market Pathways, and Carbon Integration

Article References: Pleissner, D., Podßun, P., Hölscher, P., & Friege, H. (2026). Business Models for Horse Manure Utilisation in the European Union: Compost-Based Products, Market Pathways, and Carbon Integration. Waste and Biomass Valorization. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12649-026-03776-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12649-026-03776-9

Keywords: horse manure, composting, circular economy, soil improver, biochar, carbon credits, peri-urban agriculture, EU Fertilising Products Regulation, waste valorization, growing media, greenhouse gas emissions, business models