FAIR-CYCLE delivers a breakthrough in implementing Circular Business Models that are socially just, ecologically sound, and economically viable. It focuses on scaling justice-oriented business models that prioritise labour democracy, gender equity, and global environmental justice. Recognising that such enterprises often operate in isolation, the project will enhance supportive innovation ecosystems linking them with institutions, citizen groups, and cooperatives. It will generate insights on navigating hybrid supply and value chains, where socially committed actors interact with conventional firms. Crucially, the project understands that a meaningful transition must extend beyond individual enterprises to activate change across local and regional networks of stakeholders. By engaging civil society, shifting consumption patterns, and fostering inclusive participation, it will embed justice at the heart of circular transitions - stimulating (re-)skilling, job creation, and systemic innovation aligned with Just Transition principles.
The proyect sets out to demonstrate that the CE can be more than a technocratic exercise in resource efficiency: it can be a vehicle for social transformation. The ambition is to reshape the principles that govern economic activity: who benefits, who participates14who decides what to produce, how to produce, for whom to produce?15 By translating the normative framework of the Just Transition into practical, scalable, and desirable business innovations, the project seeks to redefine what constitutes success in the CE: measured by its ability to generate wellbeing, inclusion, and democratic participation alongside environmental restoration.
FAIR-CYCLE will produce new typologies and taxonomies that do not merely classify business models by their environmental strategy, but by their social contribution, equity potential, and capacity to democratise value creation. The ambition extends to systemic transformation. By focusing on real-world ventures and supporting them with digital tools, capacity-building programmes, and investment readiness support, the project will enable a new generation of enterprises to scale sustainably. Through its Just Transition Lab and Clinic, it will create a shared infrastructure for innovation that can be used across sectors and territories, enabling cross-pollination and co-learning among entrepreneurs, communities, and policymakers. Moreover, the project is designed to influence broader ecosystems: it aims to shape the conditions under which circular business models flourish, through policy recommendations, behavioural insights, and demand-side measures such as public procurement, education, and community mobilisation. In doing so, FAIRCYCLE also seeks to advance academic debates by providing empirical evidence on the conditions under which ventures, citizens, and public institutions can align to make the transition not only possible, but inevitable. This is the project's ambition to move beyond the state of the art: to move from a CE for the few to a Just Transition by and for the many-turning circularity into a lived, inclusive, and transformative reality.