CIRCULAR CHANGE, INSTITUT ZA KROZNO GOSPODARSTVO

Their core work

Circular Change is a Slovenian NGO and think-tank dedicated to advancing circular economy practices across both industry and everyday life. They bring civil society expertise into EU research consortia — translating technical innovations in sustainable materials and eco-design into real-world adoption by citizens and businesses. Their contribution spans two distinct but complementary dimensions: the material side of circularity (biobased products, eco-design for industrial fibres and films) and the social side (changing consumption habits, measuring personal carbon footprints, co-creating lifestyle tools with citizens). In large Innovation Action consortia, they typically serve as the behavioral and engagement bridge between technical researchers and end users.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their earliest H2020 work (EFFECTIVE, 2018) placed them squarely in the material dimension of circularity — biobased caprolactam, azelaic acid, polyamides, polyesters — contributing circular economy and eco-design thinking to an industrial materials innovation project. By 2021, with PSLifestyle, the focus shifted entirely to the human dimension: sustainable lifestyles, consumption carbon footprints, behavior change, and citizen science. This is not a random pivot — it reflects a deliberate move from upstream (how products are made) to downstream (how citizens live and consume), both valid expressions of circular economy but aimed at very different audiences and methods.

Circular Change is moving toward data-driven citizen engagement and behavioral sustainability tools — making them a strong fit for future projects on climate literacy, carbon footprint platforms, or social innovation for the green transition.

How they like to work

Circular Change has participated in 2 projects and coordinated none — they enter consortia as a specialist contributor, not a project driver. Both projects were large Innovation Actions with multi-country consortia, giving them 30 unique partners across 14 countries despite only 2 projects — roughly 15 partners per consortium, which is substantial. This pattern suggests they are sought-after as a civil society or behavioral expertise voice in technically-led consortia, rather than building their own research programs.

30 unique consortium partners across 14 countries from just 2 projects — an unusually broad network for such a small portfolio, reflecting the large multi-partner structure of EU Innovation Actions. Their network is pan-European with no obvious geographic concentration visible from the data.

What sets them apart

Circular Change occupies a rare niche as a Slovenian civil society organization with demonstrated competence in both industrial biobased systems and citizen-facing behavioral tools — most NGOs in this space operate in only one of these domains. This dual track makes them credible to both technical partners (who need a non-academic dissemination and end-user voice) and social science-oriented projects (who need grounding in real material systems). Their Central European base also gives large Western-led consortia access to Slovenian and regional networks that are otherwise hard to reach.

Highlights from their portfolio

• PSLifestyle
  Directly aligned with Circular Change's core NGO mission — co-creating a digital sustainable lifestyle tool with European citizens using citizen science and behavioral data, with the highest EC contribution in their portfolio (EUR 190,562).
• EFFECTIVE
  Demonstrates surprising technical depth for an NGO — contributing to a project developing biobased polyamide and polyester fibres from caprolactam and azelaic acid, showing their circular economy expertise extends beyond advocacy into industrial material systems.