Circular Economy Business to Business Solutions: Social and Technological Entrepreneurship to Tackle Food Loss and Waste in Colombo, Galle, and Nuwara Eliya

The CIRCULAR project Sri Lanka aims to transform the agri-food value chains towards sustainability and resilience. The project targets reduction of food loss and waste, promotion of alternatives to single-use plastics, and scaling of circular business models through technical and financial support to SMEs and start-ups.

Focusing on Colombo, Galle, and Nuwara Eliya districts, CIRCULAR conducts comprehensive assessments of food system circularity, including food availability, recovery, redistribution, and animal feed valorization. It develops digital tools to facilitate business circularity assessments and safe, nutritious food redistribution across production, processing, wholesale, retail, and hospitality sectors. Capacity assessments for biogas and compost circular business models help estimate their national potential.

The project adopts a systemic approach to circularity by prioritizing food for direct human consumption, valorizing former foodstuffs into safe animal feed, and managing bio-waste for compost and biogas production. It emphasizes prevention of food loss at post-harvest stages and food waste at retail and household levels through improved logistics, packaging, cold chain infrastructure, and behavioral change.
To foster innovation and scale solutions, CIRCULAR facilitates B2B engagement workshops that co-design circular economy business models involving agri-food actors, technology providers, municipalities, financiers, and civil society. It also implements district-specific case studies on food waste management and supports cross-regional learning and capacity development, including outbound technical missions and national workshops.

Knowledge products including case studies, decision-support tools, visual documentation, and investment briefs are developed to inform stakeholders and attract investments. By strengthening circular business innovation and enabling multi-stakeholder collaboration, the project aims to institutionalize circular economy practices, enhance resource efficiency, and generate socio-economic and environmental benefits across Sri Lanka’s agri-food systems.