CIRCULAR ECONOMY. THE WAY THE GREEK INDUSTRY LEADERS DO IT.

The promotion and transition to a circular economy model presupposes the consideration of the activities that support the enterprise's value chain. The organization's internal operations must adopt the circular economy at every step of the value chain, from product development to consumption, repair and reconstruction, disposal potential and secondary raw materials re-entering into the economic cycle. The present study is a prototype research for the Greek business environment under the context of the Circular Economy model, since the literature on relative empirical studies is rather limited for the country. The main purpose is to map the main procedures, business strategies and measures of the Greek industries for adopting and implementing the circular economy model during the complete life cycle of products. The study is based on primary data from the Greek industry leaders, about the knowledge of the circular economy model, the assessment of the circular economy in the business sector and the practical applications and procedures of the enterprises for the adoption of the model. Results show that there is a lack of an integrated and well-planned approach to fully adopt the model, in relation to the procedures proposed by several researchers in the field. Although the Greek industries of the study recognize the importance of adopting such methods to theory operational framework for entering in new markets, boosting their innovativeness and competitiveness contributing to sustainability, however they mainly remain to recycling procedures of products and materials for reuse purposes.