Circular Stories
The problem
The dominance of consumerism as the prevailing narrative of happiness and fulfillment poses a significant challenge to fostering sustainable behaviour at the micro level. While environmental awareness has grown, efforts to promote sustainable practices often fail to connect with people on a deeper personal and social level. Traditional intervention approaches tend to rely on information, commitment, feedback and incentives, often overlooking the emotional, imaginative, and social aspects to drive cultural change. To overcome this, more holistic approaches are needed – ones that not only envision a circular economy future, but actively engage people in reimagining their roles within it.
The solution
CircleUp is developing a new approach that emphasises social identity as a driving force for behaviour change. It will be implemented as part of a broader intervention framework that will support 100 households and their social networks in Germany, Latvia, Norway and the UK to explore and adopt circular economy practices in two intervention phases.
Using a gamified digital platform, users will be encouraged to engage with the circular economy and citizenship practices through storytelling by creating “Circular Stories”, in which they document and reflect on their behaviour. The Circular Stories serve several purposes:
- they offer players the opportunity to document their engagement, providing space for insight and reflection;
- they make the player’s engagement visible to others, allowing them to receive or to give feedback through likes and comments;
- they create a universe of unique circular solutions that provide a bigger picture and stimulate the imagination of what circular citizenship can be.
These shared narratives help develop a collective vision of circular citizenship while reinforcing social bonds. In this way, the game aims to create a dynamic and supportive community that encourages continuous learning through interaction.
Contact us
The circular stories platform is still under development. The complete digital platform is expected to launch in 2025/26.
In the meantime, if you have questions about the platform or would be interested to collaborate, please contact us: