What circular economy looks like across different contexts

The Roots of Circularity (RoC) programme in Nepal and the CirculUP! programme in Armenia were developed independently in very different political, economic, and cultural contexts. They worked with different actors and institutional realities, yet the same enabling conditions and barriers emerged. That is no coincidence. It reflects what becomes visible when a globally connected, locally rooted network works across ecosystems over time. What differs is how those conditions take shape, and what it takes to respond to them.

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The same enabling conditions emerged in both Nepal and Armenia independently: access to finance, storytelling, coalition-building, education, and shared understanding of what circular economy means.
Finance unlocks more than equipment. In both programmes, entrepreneurs who received grant funding began to experiment, build supplier relationships, and reach communities that would have been impossible without that initial capital. Who gets left out, however, differs sharply between the two contexts.
Local understanding of circular economy cannot be assumed. In urban Nepal and Armenia, entrepreneurs framed it through waste reduction and resource efficiency. In rural Nepal, many communities were already practising its principles through indigenous knowledge and tradition despite not encountering the concept before.

Access to finance is foundational

In both Nepal and Armenia, entrepreneurs pointed to access to finance as their primary barrier. And in both contexts, the entrepreneurs who received grant funding did not just invest in equipment. They began to experiment, iterate, and build relationships with suppliers and communities that would have been impossible without that initial capital.

What differs between the two contexts is who gets left out. In Nepal, the finance gap falls hardest on women, marginalised groups, and rural entrepreneurs who cannot meet collateral requirements. While in Armenia, the barrier is more structural. Circular business models are not yet legible to conventional investors, and the policy frameworks have not caught up with the ambition of the entrepreneurs already building within it.

Storytelling and community engagement drives behaviour change

Both programmes found that circular economy knowledge delivered through training alone does not shift how people act. What moves people, whether school students in Lumbini, farmers in Butwal, or urban youth in Yerevan, is tangible, relatable, participatory engagement: face-to-face events, hands-on activities, and content built around narrative rather than instruction.

SMEs that built clear narratives around sustainability, local value chains, and cultural heritage developed stronger consumer trust and market credibility than those leading with the circular economy concept directly. In Nepal, entrepreneurs whose products carried a story, connecting what they made to environmental preservation, indigenous craft, or community livelihoods, built more durable market relationships. Under the RoC programme, a trained network of 71 journalists, are now equipped to tell circular economy stories accurately and accessibly, sustaining a public narrative that extends well beyond what any single awareness campaign could achieve.

Coalitions and alliances are crucial for policy engagement

The Armenian Circular Economy Coalition and Green Alliance Nepal demonstrate that no single organisation can hold the relationships, policy dialogue, and ecosystem coordination that circularity requires. Building these alliances takes time and dedicated resources, and should begin from the earliest stages of programme design.

In Armenia, the CirculUP! project reached a significant milestone when coalition members contributed to the national Framework Action Plan on Green, Sustainable and Circular Economy, endorsed by Prime Ministerial Decree in November 2025. The pathway to that outcome was gradual and relationship-driven, dependent on the coalition’s credibility with two key ministries over time. It worked because a policy ecosystem was already in place: bilateral meetings with technical ministries, written outputs, and strategy documents all had established entry points to build on.

In Nepal, that foundation was less established. Entrepreneurs are frequently excluded from policymaking processes, and policy changes are not consistently communicated to those they affect. In 2025, Green Alliance Nepal, established through the Roots of Circularity project, convened the country’s first national conclave on circularity, creating a platform for dialogue and concrete action toward a more resource-efficient and regenerative economy.

The role of education as an enabler

In Armenia, universities were responsive partners. The project achieved integration of circular economy content into existing courses at Yerevan State University, the launch of a Master’s programme at Eurasia International University, and adoption within the Academy of Public Administration. These achievements reflect a higher education system with the institutional capacity to absorb and formalise new content relatively quickly.

In Nepal, stakeholders emphasised that entrepreneurship and circular economy education should start much earlier, at school level, while also strengthening links between education, vocational training, and industry. Under the project, circular economy content has been embedded into national school and university curricula across more than 11,500 institutions, reaching over 1.6 million students.

Understanding of circular economy varies

In Armenia, circularity is often equated with recycling, requiring efforts to broaden that perception toward resource loops, value creation, and systemic business models. In Nepal, the understanding varied even more sharply between urban and rural contexts. In Kathmandu and Lumbini, entrepreneurs who had heard of circular economy interpreted it through the lens of resource efficiency and waste reduction. In rural areas, many had not encountered the concept at all, but were already practicing elements of it through indigenous knowledge, agricultural traditions, and community resource management, without the language or framework to connect that practice to a broader circular economy story.

The conditions are universal. The pathways are not.

Across two countries, in two very different contexts, these programmes surface the same underlying truth: circularity requires the same enabling conditions everywhere, but those conditions cannot be built the same way twice.

What these programmes demonstrate, together, is that the work of circular economy transition is not the transfer of a model. It is the careful reading of what is missing, what is emerging, and what is already there.

Impact Hub’s value as a network lies in that capacity: locally rooted teams with the relationships and contextual knowledge to understand what each ecosystem actually needs, connected to global learning and resources that strengthen without flattening. That is what it takes to build circular economy ecosystems that last.

Impact Hub Network operates across more than 130 cities globally. Through our Circularity programmes in Armenia and Nepal, funded by the European Union, we are contributing to the ecosystems that enable long-term circular economy transitions.

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