Abstract
The global society faces an existential threat if it fails to meet
current and future material needs of its populations, while staying
within the carrying capacity of our planet. An approach that has been
put forwards to address this complex challenge is to aim to close our
society's material flows through introduction of a Circular Economy
(CE). This paper provides an extensive literature review to understand
the evolution of material circularity
concepts and strategies, and their potential for increasing material
efficiency and reduce environmental impacts towards meeting the material
needs of our societies in an environmentally sustainable manner. Based
on the review it can be concluded that CE may have a strong potential to
help address the challenge. However, this requires broadening the focus
of CE from technical and economical to political and socio-cultural
dimensions, adopting a whole-systems approach, aiming to redesign
economic and social relations to not just reduce the impact humanity has
on the environment but actually achieve a balance in human-nature
relations with a planetary boundary thinking. Pursuing purely technical
and economic avenues to implement CE for increasing material circulation
and sustainable growth on the foundation of our current linear economic
system, will not achieve its full potential. It will not be sustainable
but continue to produce the challenges that we currently have.
Original language | English |
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Journal | C I R P Annals |
Volume | 71 |
Issue number | 2 |
Pages (from-to) | 505-528 |
ISSN | 0007-8506 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Keywords
- Life cycle
- Circular economy
- Absolute sustainability