Circular Economy and the Transition to a Sustainable Society: Integrated Assessment Methods for a New Paradigm

TY - JOUR

T1 - Circular Economy and the Transition to a Sustainable Society: Integrated Assessment Methods for a New Paradigm

AU - Oliveira, Mariana

AU - Miguel, Mecia

AU - Kevin van Langen, Sven

AU - Ncube, Amos

AU - Zucaro, Amalia

AU - Fiorentino, Gabriella

AU - Passaro, Renato

AU - Santagata, Remo

AU - Coleman, Nick

AU - Lowe, Ben

AU - Ulgiati, Sergio

AU - Genovese, Andrea

N1 - © The Author(s) 2021 Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding support from the projects “Realising the Transition towards the Circular Economy: Models, Methods and Applications (ReTraCE)”, funded by the European Commission H2020-MSCA-ITN- 2018 programme (Grant Agreement Number: 814247) and “Promoting Circular Economy in the Food Supply Chain (ProCEedS)”, funded by European Commission H2020-MSCA-RISE-2018 programme (Grant Agreement Number: 823967). Funding: Open access funding provided by Università Parthenope di Napoli within the CRUI-CARE Agreement.

PY - 2021/6

Y1 - 2021/6

N2 - The circular economy concept has recently gained prominence in political debate and corporate discourse around the world as a pathway towards sustainability. The academic debate is characterised by several and sometimes very contrasting definitions of the concept. We claim here that the issue is not finding silver-bullet solutions that will simultaneously support population growth, increasing affluence and environmental resource regeneration. We argue that a clearer definition is needed for the circular economy concept, in terms of strategies, objectives, future states and stakeholders’ needs. Also, assessment methods need to be developed for keeping track of the transition towards acircular economy. Within this context, this paper establishes the need for a multistakeholder, multi-dimensional and multi-criteria approach for the evaluation of the transition towards a circular economy across different time and spatial scales, as well as multiple sustainability dimensions.

AB - The circular economy concept has recently gained prominence in political debate and corporate discourse around the world as a pathway towards sustainability. The academic debate is characterised by several and sometimes very contrasting definitions of the concept. We claim here that the issue is not finding silver-bullet solutions that will simultaneously support population growth, increasing affluence and environmental resource regeneration. We argue that a clearer definition is needed for the circular economy concept, in terms of strategies, objectives, future states and stakeholders’ needs. Also, assessment methods need to be developed for keeping track of the transition towards acircular economy. Within this context, this paper establishes the need for a multistakeholder, multi-dimensional and multi-criteria approach for the evaluation of the transition towards a circular economy across different time and spatial scales, as well as multiple sustainability dimensions.

U2 - 10.1007/s43615-021-00019-y

DO - 10.1007/s43615-021-00019-y

M3 - Article

SN - 2730-5988

VL - 1

SP - 99

EP - 113

JO - Circular Economy and Sustainability

JF - Circular Economy and Sustainability

IS - 1

ER -