Giving Compass' Take:

• Catherine Early shares eight lessons for companies that want to embrace circular business models to advance the SDGs. 

• How can funders help companies make these shifts? How can partnerships drive transitions to circular business models and economies? 

• Read about four steps toward business sustainability. 

As such BusinessGreen spoke to circular economy experts to get their top tips on where businesses should start as they develop a circular SDG12 strategy.

1. Target, measure, act
"Be really clear what your environmental impacts are, and measure them," advises Richard Swannell, development director at WRAP. Start by measuring waste, then you quickly realize the scale of the opportunity for reducing it, and can act on that information, he says.

2. Get over the fear
"A lot of businesses are paralyzed by this goal, it touches so many products that they do not know where to start," says Claire Brady, program manager of sustainable business at Bioregional, of the circular economy vision.

3. It's a business strategy
It is the primacy of these new business models that should be at the heart of any circular economy strategy. Stop thinking of the circular economy as an environmental strategy, advises Brendan Edgerton, director of circular economy, World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

4. Look at the longer-term impacts
To ensure a product has a lower environmental impact during its production and consumption, you have to think through the whole lifecycle, including delivery to customer and end of life, says Beverley Cornaby, program manager at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

5. Wipe the slate clean
Pentatonic undertakes thought experiments with clients, asking them to forget the experience they have gained through years in their sector, and think instead about how they would design the product now.

6. Embed circularity across the business
You cannot create circularity as a silo within an organization, continues Mossop.

7. Collaborate widely
Like most of the SDGs, sustainable production and consumption cannot be engineered in isolation.

8. Tap the resource base
Beyond the recommendations offered by the experts we spoke to a number of major reports have been produced by organizations working on the circular economy to help businesses get started or advance their strategies on sustainable consumption and production.

Read the full article about embracing circular business models by Catherine Early at GreenBiz.