Circular economy and the transition to a sustainable society : integrated assessment methods for a new paradigm

Abstract

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 a circular economy. Within this context, this paper establishes the need for a multi-stakeholder, 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.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Oliveira, M. Miguel, M. van Langen, S.K. Ncube, A. Zucaro, A. Fiorentino, G. Passaro, R. Santagata, R. Coleman, N. Lowe, B.H. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5081-952X Ulgiati, S. Genovese, A.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2021 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords:	Circular economy; Environmental accounting methods; LCA; Sustainability; Economic transition; Wellbeing
Dates:	Published: June 2021 Published (online): 22 March 2021 Accepted: 24 February 2021
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number European Commission - HORIZON 2020 814247; 823967
Depositing User:	Symplectic Sheffield
Date Deposited:	15 Apr 2021 11:03
Last Modified:	10 Feb 2022 11:54
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Springer Nature
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1007/s43615-021-00019-y
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:172967

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Circular economy and the transition to a sustainable society : integrated assessment methods for a new paradigm

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