The Case of an Agricultural Crop Business Association in Navarra as Circular Economy Intermediary

The circular economy (CE) is an alternative economic system based on closing energy and material cycles to achieve sustainable development and create value based on innovation. In this sense, business associations (BAs) can work as intermediaries to promote CE in industrial sectors. They bring together many companies, generate trust-based relationships, support companies’ strategy and collaborative innovation to construct closed-loop material flows, and increase competitiveness in sectors and regions. This study aims to show the BA’s role as intermediaries of CE and promoters of industrial symbiosis (IS) as a value creation strategy among its affiliated companies (AC). Thus, this work takes the form of an exploratory case study of five different companies of the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives of Navarra (UCAN) in Spain. Researchers collected this study’s data through a focus group and surveys. As a result, an original serious game was developed in 2016 and a survey in 2016 and 2020, which considers the CE’s six fields of action (take, make, manufacture, distribution, use, recovery, and IS). Finally, this study proposes a methodology to promote the CE through the BAs, based on the performance of the UCAN as an intermediary of the CE and IS. Likewise, BAs’ potential to promote the closure of energy and materials cycles in regions and commercial sectors such as agribusiness is demonstrated. The study also demonstrated the organizations’ evolution and the improved perception of economic benefits and reduced barriers to implementing CE. This long-term analysis is valuable in novel topics such as CE.