Purpose

The circular economy (CE) promotes the recovery of value from waste while also working towards achieving long-term environmentally sustainable goals. The goal of this research is to explore the challenges, opportunities, future scope and green practices that small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) face as they move from the linear economy to the CE.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a structured questionnaire, a survey was conducted with representatives from 163 SMEs in India. The data were analysed using co-variance based structural equation modelling technique.

Findings

This research identifies various challenges, including consumer acceptability, worries about awareness, recyclability issues, financial constraints and the absence of a defined management plan for SMEs in adopting the CE. Further, strong management will, innovation, technical up-gradation, training of employees, employee motivation and appropriate guidelines are recognized as essential possibilities for CE implementation.

Originality/value

While there has been some work on CE, no studies have directly compared these efforts with the goal of shifting from a linear economy to a CE. Given the transient nature of many archives, it is critical that the efforts put into them and the opinions of those who work in them be recorded so that communities can benefit from a shared linear economy in making decisions about their own history.

中文翻译：

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减少、再利用、回收：循环经济原则、可持续发展和发展生态系统的创业精神

目的

循环经济（CE）促进废物价值的回收，同时努力实现长期的环境可持续目标。本研究的目的是探讨中小型企业 (SME) 从线性经济转向循环经济时所面临的挑战、机遇、未来范围和绿色实践。

设计/方法论/途径

基于结构化问卷，对印度 163 家中小企业的代表进行了调查。使用基于协方差的结构方程建模技术对数据进行分析。

发现

这项研究指出了各种挑战，包括消费者的接受度、对意识的担忧、可回收性问题、财务限制以及中小企业在采用CE时缺乏明确的管理计划。此外，强有力的管理意愿、创新、技术升级、员工培训、员工激励和适当的指导方针被认为是CE实施的重要可能性。

原创性/价值

虽然在 CE 方面已经做了一些工作，但没有研究直接将这些努力与从线性经济转向 CE 的目标进行比较。鉴于许多档案的短暂性，记录这些档案的努力和工作人员的意见至关重要，以便社区在做出有关自己历史的决策时能够从共享的线性经济中受益。