Rethinking Resources: How Circular Economy Investments Offer Diversification, Resilience, and Growth
Circular economy is rapidly gaining prominence as a critical investment sector, directly confronting resource scarcity, waste, and environmental challenges. Evolving from an eco-friendly concept into a significant economic and strategic imperative, its models are fundamentally designed to decouple economic growth from finite resource depletion, aiming to maximize prosperity while respecting planetary limits. By championing reuse and recycling, it actively reduces pollution and our reliance on extracting raw materials. For investors, we believe circular economy presents an opportunity to capitalize on powerful policy tailwinds and structural market drivers. We also see new investment opportunities emerging with infrastructure characteristics: defensive, long-term, inflation-linked cash flows from robust business models vital to society.
The Limits of a Linear Model
Our current economic system has largely operated on a "linear economy" model, characterized by the extraction of raw materials, their transformation into products, and their eventual disposal as waste. This linear trajectory remains exposed to supply chain vulnerabilities, price volatility, and exposure to geopolitical risk while also contributing to significant environmental degradation. The problem is escalating rapidly. Material consumption has grown by over 65% globally in the past two decades. Municipal solid waste volumes are projected to increase another 56% by 2050, from 2.2 billion tons in 2020 to 3.8 billion tons, with global management costs expected to nearly double from $250 billion today, driven by rising labor, fuel costs, and landfill fees.1
In contrast, the circular economy model reimagines the flow of resources by recycling and repurposing previously used products and materials. We believe that when faced with inflationary periods, management teams that have implemented circular models will experience lower input costs. Similarly, circular economy models could offer enhanced resilience against tariff and trade disruptions by prioritizing domestic resource recovery and local material flows, businesses with circular strategies can create shorter, more geographically contained value chains. This localization has the potential to reduce vulnerability to geopolitical disputes, shipping disruptions, and currency fluctuations.
The Role of Private Capital in Driving Circular Infrastructure
The scale of the paradigm shift represented by circular economy demonstrates the criticality of private investment in infrastructure. Although new tools, technical solutions, and regulatory frameworks are meant to mitigate risk and reduce costs for water utilities, the chronic underinvestment in critical infrastructure requires other sources of private capital. In the US most water and waste infrastructure was built in the 1970s and 1980s and funding for water utilities has consistently lagged investment needs by approximately 20% since 2016.2 The US water and wastewater utility sector faced an estimated US $110 billion funding gap in 2024 and in a business-as-usual scenario, the funding gap could grow to nearly $194 billion by 2030.3 This substantial funding gap underscores the indispensable role of private investment.
The Role of Circular Economy Investments in a Portfolio
Investing in the circular economy can offer significant growth opportunities while simultaneously minimizing risk. This is achieved through key infrastructure characteristics that provide enduring advantages, downside protection, and control. Specifically, circular economy infrastructure investments target companies that address essential societal needs and provide mission-critical services to their customers. These businesses are well-positioned in the market due to several factors: they operate in sectors with high barriers to entry; they offer stable cash flows with high visibility; and this visibility is often secured through input contracts, such as guaranteed waste or feedstock supply, and offtake agreements, like those for recycled materials or biofuel sales.
These investments also typically offer resilience and risk management through businesses with durable capital structures and strong track records throughout economic cycles, including periods of high and low inflation and limited exposure to technology, commercial, currency or geopolitical risk.
From a portfolio construction perspective, circular economy investments offer diversification, inflation protection, and measurable sustainability outcomes. Their revenues depend on waste volumes and resource recovery mandates rather than commodity price cycles, providing low correlation to traditional energy assets. Many operate under CPI-linked tariffs or concession agreements, enhancing inflation linkage and downside resilience. These assets also deliver quantifiable decarbonization and resource efficiency metrics—the type of “double materiality” that sustainability-aligned investors increasingly require.
Within an infrastructure portfolio, circular economy assets span the full spectrum of opportunities. At one end lie regulated waste and water reuse concessions; others include anaerobic-digestion and bio-waste energy facilities; at another end lie advanced chemical-recycling, sustainable fuel, and battery materials recovery platforms. This tiered exposure allows investors to balance yield stability with growth and innovation optionality.
Circular Economy for Inclusive Growth and Supply Chain Resilience
For investors, the social upside of circular economy infrastructure is direct, measurable, and durable. Every ton of waste diverted, or kilo of secondary material processed, translates into jobs, health benefits, and local supply chain resilience.
The broader shift to circular resource flows could generate more than 6 million net new jobs globally by 2030, spanning logistics, materials recovery, repair, and remanufacturing.4 Circular economy industries tend to create distributed employment across local communities—from waste collectors and transporters to plant operators and technicians. For infrastructure investors, this means each dollar of capex can have a measurable multiplier effect on local job creation and social stability—a clear connection for sustainability-oriented capital.
An estimated 15-20 million people in developing countries work as informal waste collectors.5 Circular economy infrastructure such as material recovery facilities, recycling plants, and bio-resource depots can provide these workers a pathway to formal employment with safety standards, healthcare, and training.
Circular infrastructure builds community and supply chain resilience by keeping resources local. The global disruptions triggered by COVID-19 pandemic exposed profound vulnerabilities in conventional supply chains— long lead-times, single-source dependencies, and linear “take-make-waste” systems. The shift toward a circular economy offers a resilience-enhancing alternative: by keeping materials in use and nearer to end-markets, circular models reduce exposure to global shocks and input bottlenecks. This enables firms and cities to maintain throughput of essential goods even when global flows are interrupted.
Investment Opportunities in Circular Economy
Circular economy is transforming infrastructure investing by linking resource efficiency, resilience, and social value. As economies move away from linear “take-make-waste” models, new assets need to recover materials, close resource loops, and deliver essential services sustainably. For investors, these projects combine contracted revenues, long asset lives, and measurable sustainability outcomes, fitting naturally into three opportunity buckets:
- Infrastructure for resilience and resource efficiency.
- Waste and services that enhance circularity and beneficial reuse.
- Essential services infrastructure.
Infrastructure for Resilience and Resource Efficiency
This bucket captures assets that strengthen system resilience while reducing energy, material, and water intensity.
- Industrial circularity and critical materials recovery: Facilities that recover metals, chemicals, and battery materials from industrial or end-of-life products, reducing import dependence and improving supply chain resilience. These are increasingly treated as strategic infrastructure given their role in domestic resource security and decarbonization.
- Bioresources and advanced bioenergy: Anaerobic digestion and biogas plants that convert organic waste into renewable energy and soil nutrients exemplify resource efficiency infrastructure. These assets deliver energy diversification, resource recovery, and stable, inflation-linked returns - hallmarks of resilient infrastructure.
Examples of companies include:
This company aims to significantly boost biomethane production capacity in Europe, contributing to decarbonization and energy security. Verdalia uses anaerobic digestion to convert manure from farms into biomethane, a renewable energy source with a near-zero carbon footprint during combustion. This process also produces nutrient rich digestate, which Verdalia can sell back to farmers as an organic fertilizer, closing the nutrient loop and reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizers.
This company develops, builds, owns and operates anaerobic digestion facilities in the United States to produce biogas, also known as renewable natural gas (RNG) from industrial organic waste that is used for pipeline injection. Synthica’s approach offers a dual revenue stream from waste intake fees and RNG offtake contracts.
Waste and Services that Enhance Circularity and Beneficial Reuse
This includes logistics, sorting, and material recovery systems that keep resources circulating through multiple economic lives.
- Reuse infrastructure and reverse logistics: Networks of take-back depots, refurbishment centers, and automated material recovery facilities (MRFs) provide the backbone for circular supply chains.
- Materials Reuse: Recovery plants that process aggregates, asphalt, concrete, and steel for reuse eliminate the need for virgin extraction while aligning with public sector procurement targets. Conventional building practices prioritize permanence and single-use design, consume vast amounts of raw materials, and generate significant waste and carbon emissions when demolished or replaced. While the built environment is responsible for almost 40 percent of global energy-related CO2 emissions and produces about one-third of the world’s waste, only 1% of materials from building demolitions are reused.6
Examples of companies include:
This company reduces waste and emissions by using durable, reusable steel containers, primarily for the transport and storage of rubber and food products, that circulate through a global network for collection, cleaning, and reuse. The company offers a pay-per-use model that promotes long-term use instead of disposal, helping companies lower their environmental footprint and make supply chains more efficient and sustainable.
This company provides comprehensive solutions for the collection, transport, processing, recycling and disposal of non-hazardous liquid waste for blue chip food service and grocery chain customers. These recurring, essential, regulatory-driven services have positioned the company as a leading player in the US liquid waste circular economy with over 45,000 customers. Liquid Environmental Solutions has recycled 515 million gallons in a year and converted 70 million pounds of waste into cleaner fuel and energy.7
Essential Services Infrastructure
Essential service sectors embed circularity principles within socially critical assets for long-term community resilience.
- Water and Wastewater treatment infrastructure: Circular water infrastructure such as advanced treatment and water desalination plants closes the loop on water use and is particularly critical for water-scarce cities. These assets are often backed by regulated, inflation-linked revenue models and long-term concession contracts.
- Healthcare and Educational services infrastructure: Hospitals, clinics, and educational campuses designed for modular reuse, renewable energy integration, and material efficiency represent the social dimension of circularity. These assets meet essential societal needs while embedding lifecycle efficiency in their construction and operation.
An example of these types of companies include:
This company is a leading provider of modular units for social infrastructure in Northern Europe, with operations in the Nordics, Germany and the Netherlands. With a fleet of over 60,000 modular units in constant circulation, Adapteo provides adaptable, reusable, and quickly deployable spaces for essential functions like schools, daycares, and healthcare centers. These modular buildings are designed for adaptability, expansion, and reusability, significantly reducing construction time and waste. A new Adapteo module has a 60% lower embodied GHG emissions than a new equivalent traditional building. The business model features strong infrastructure characteristics, including long-term contracts (averaging seven years) with inflation linkage and robust counterparties, with 75% of customers being state-backed municipalities.
A Significant Frontier Within Infrastructure
Circular economy represents a significant investment frontier within infrastructure. It offers a powerful dual benefit: addressing critical environmental challenges while simultaneously presenting attractive investment return potential. The sector's inherent infrastructure characteristics—high barriers to entry, contracted business models, essential services, and countercyclical resilience that makes it particularly appealing for long-term investors. Furthermore, its strong alignment with global decarbonization efforts and robust regulatory tailwinds underscore its long-term growth potential. From an investor’s perspective, we believe investing in circular economy will enhance multi-asset portfolios with resilient, inflation-protected, and growth-oriented infrastructure assets. The circular economy is not just an environmental imperative; it is a strategic investment opportunity that we believe is poised to deliver substantial value for years to come.
We maintain a strong conviction in the mid-market infrastructure landscape. We focus on investing in businesses with leading market positions and stable cash flows across four key themes (circular economy, digital transformation, transportation and logistics, and energy transition). This focus on economic fundamentals ensures that investments are grounded in sustainable value creation, regardless of policy shifts. By engaging with seasoned experts possessing deep sector expertise, operational value-add capabilities, and robust sustainability integration, we believe investors can effectively capitalize on the growing circular economy opportunity set.
1 UNEP Global Waste Management Outlook 2024.
2 McKinsey 2021 US Water Infrastructure: Making Funding Count. As of November 24, 2021.
3 McKinsey Water resilience: Closing the funding gap for utilities 2025. As of March 11, 2025.
4 International Labour Organization, May 2023. ILO Brief – Mapping practices, initiatives and policies around the circular economy and emerging services in the retail sector.
5 International Labour Organization, October 2023. Reducing Waste Towards a Just Transition – Work, Labour, and Value in the Informal Recycling Chain.
6 McKinsey. “How circularity can make the built environment more sustainable.” As of May 2025; World Green Building Council, Bringing embodied carbon upfront, As of 2019; World Green Building Council, “Circular economy in the built environment waste hierarchy: Why recycling is the last resort.” As of March 3, 2023.
7 Liquid Environmental Solutions 2023 ESG Report https://www.liquidenviro.com/blog-news/2023-esg-report
