CIRCONOMY® Hub - Fraunhofer LBF

In 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, 14 Fraunhofer-Institutes came together to work on concepts to transform linear value chains to sovereign value cycles. The work was focused on Sustainable Development Goal SDG 12, the transformation of the industry towards circularity and the idea that for the generation of economic value in regional and global value chains we have to take into account social and ecological values, too.

During the following year, 2021, the second year of the pandemic created not only the awareness for the medical consequences of an uncontrolled propagation of a virus, but also in how far the interruption of value chains was intertwined with the security of supply. During the summer of 2021, with the „Act on Corporate Due Diligence Obligations for the Prevention of Human Rights Violations in Supply Chains“ the German Federal Assembly (Deutscher Bundestag) redefined the responsibility of businesses for global value chains. In the same year, two more Fraunhofer-Institutes had joined the consortium, so now 16 institutes worked on an approach on how to implement sovereign value cycles and the transformation to a circular economy in industrial application with all relevant stakeholders from society, industry, politics, and science.

The 16 Fraunhofer-Institutes provided insights and competencies from material science, product development, processing, digitalisation and data management, supply chain management, sustainability assessment, renewable energies, production technology, recycling, material flow management and macroeconomics.

All employees would like to thank the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft for funding the two projects.

CIRCONOMY^® Hub – Implementing sovereign value cycles and circular economy

Project website

Project coordination

Participating institutes

List of Fraunhofer structural elements involved

Contact Press / Media

Dr. Christian Schütz