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Putting sovereign value cycles and the circular economy into practice

In 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, 14 Fraunhofer institutes used Fraunhofer research resources to develop a concept for turning linear value chains into sovereign value cycles. At the center of this research were Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12, the transformation to a circular economy and the principle that economic value creation needs to incorporate social and ecological measures of value along regional and global supply chains. The second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, 2021, exposed not just the medical consequences of unbridled viral transmission, but also the associated supply chain disruptions, resulting in a dwindling security of supply. In summer 2021, the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag) enshrined the responsibility of businesses for global supply chains in the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz — LkSG). In the same year, the project consortium, which had by then grown to include 16 Fraunhofer institutes, once again used Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft resources to develop a way to put sovereign value cycles and the transformation to the circular economy into practice using mission-oriented CIRCONOMY^® Hubs.

The 16 cooperating institutes combine expertise in material, product and process development, digitalization and data management, supply chain management, sustainability assessment, renewable energies, manufacturing engineering, recycling, material flow management and economics.

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

Putting sovereign value cycles and the circular economy into practice

Overall coordination

Participating institutes

List of Fraunhofer structural elements involved