This project is funded by the Victorian government's Recycling Victoria Innovation Fund as part of the Circular Economy Business Innovation Centre (CEBIC), and aims to support Victoria’s circular economy policy and action plan Recycling Victoria - a new economy (DELWP 2020) which is a 10-year policy and action plan for waste and recycling.

Within this project, the research team at Swinburne’s Centre for Urban Transitions aims to provide the conceptualisation of Circular Economy Business Models (CEBMs) and data collection to build a digital infrastructure and solution space for implementing CEBMs through Swinburne’s Data for Social Good Cloud Innovation Centre. The researchers use systems science and research together with transitions and design thinking to provide government, industry and commons stakeholders with the practical and data-enabled activation pathways towards a more CE. This will strengthen and accelerate fit-for-purpose CE innovations within Victoria.

This progress report describes the development of prototype Theories of Change (ToC) that draw on multiple theoretical frameworks and experiences of transformation towards a more sustainable society. These ToCs will be used for the remainder of the project to guide further data collection, conversations with industry and government, as well as provide a conceptual foundation for industry co-learning and coordination through a Virtual Intermediary that they aim to prototype.

This report outlines the thinking about how a virtual intermediary can be used to support the transition towards a more CE, the project methodology and ToCs identified through literature, a beta-taxonomy of actors within the CE activation pathways and a description of the next steps in the research project.