Open Access

David Knäble, Konstantinos P. Tsagarakis

• In this study, circular economy (CE) relevance in Germany will be discussed based on LinkedIn readily available data. LinkedIn company profiles located in Germany with ‘circular economy’ in their description or any other field were selected and used as a data source to analyze their CE relation. Overall, 514 German companies were analyzed in reference to the 15 German regions they belong. MostIn this study, circular economy (CE) relevance in Germany will be discussed based on LinkedIn readily available data. LinkedIn company profiles located in Germany with ‘circular economy’ in their description or any other field were selected and used as a data source to analyze their CE relation. Overall, 514 German companies were analyzed in reference to the 15 German regions they belong. Most companies are located in the federal state of Berlin (126), followed by North Rhine-Westphalia (96) and Bavaria (77). In terms of the industry sector, they are self-classified to environmental services (64), management consulting (50), renewables & environment (33), research (31), and computer software (18) etc. Regarding their employees with LinkedIn profiles, 22,621 people are affiliated with these companies, ranging from one to 7,877. All examined companies have a total of 819,632 followers on LinkedIn, ranging from none to 88,167. An increase in CE-related companies was recorded in 13 of the 16 federal states of Germany over a one-year period. This work provides essential insights into the increasing relevance and trends of the circular economy in German enterprises and will help conduct further national studies with readily available data from LinkedIn.…