Iacovidou, E orcid.org/0000-0001-6841-0995, Millward-Hopkins, J, Busch, J orcid.org/0000-0002-7036-8260 et al. (5 more authors) (2017) A pathway to circular economy: Developing a conceptual framework for complex value assessment of resources recovered from waste. Journal of Cleaner Production, 168. pp. 1279-1288. ISSN 0959-6526
Abstract
The transition to a circular economy, where the value of resources is preserved in the technosphere, must be supported by policies and operational decision making based on evidence. Existing methods used to provide this evidence (e.g. LCA, LCSA, CBA) are not robust enough to adequately address the creation and dissipation of systemic and multidimensional value that spans the social, environmental, economic and technical domains. This study proposes a novel, conceptual approach that seeks to assess how complex value is created, destroyed and distributed in resource recovery from waste systems. This approach expands beyond conventional methods of estimating value. It combines scientific and engineering methods with a socio-political narrative grounded in the systems of provision (sop) approach, and provides a comprehensive, analytical framework for making the transition to a resource-efficient future. This framework has the potential to connect bottom-up and top-down approaches in assessing resource recovery from waste systems, and address systemic challenges through transparency and flexibility, while accounting for the dynamic and non-linear nature of commodities flow and infrastructure provision in the overall system. This creates the pathway towards circular economy, and lays the foundations for future advances in computational and assessment methodologies in the field of RRfW.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | Crown Copyright © 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Circular economy; Waste management; Resource recovery; Complex value; Sustainability assessment; Systems of provision |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Economics Division (LUBS) (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Civil Engineering (Leeds) > Institute for Resilient Infrastructure (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC NE/L014149/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 11 Sep 2017 12:00 |
Last Modified: | 07 Jun 2023 13:53 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.09.002 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:121038 |