Discussing practical and educational challenges in teaching circular economy

This chapter will introduce circular economy and cradle to cradle models of sustainable production. It will reflect on the key blockages to a meaningful sustainable production and how these could be overcome, particularly in the context of business education. The case study of the course for bachelor's students within International Business Management Studies (IBMS) program at three vocational schools, and at University College in The Netherlands will be discussed. Student teams from these schools were given an assignment to make a business plan for a selected sponsor company in order to advise them how to make a transition from a linear to circular economy model. These case studies will illustrate the opportunities as well as potential pitfalls of the closed-loop production models. The results of case studies' analysis show that there was a mismatch between expectations of the sponsor companies and those of students on the one hand and a mismatch between theory and practice on the other hand. Helpful directions for future research and teaching practice are outlined.