Current trends in economy, sustainable development, and energy: a circular economy view

TLDR: The concept of CE has recently been proposed as a new development strategy that aims to mitigate the contradiction between the rapid economic growth and the shortage of raw materials and energy.

Abstract: Nowadays, it is widely recognized that the current production and consumption models are no longer adequate because of the inefficient use of resources (especially energy) and its dramatical consequences, environmental load and social inequality (UNEP 2011). In this context, Circular Economy (CE) has started to be considered a sustainable economic paradigm (Geissdoerfer et al. 2017), enabled by novel business models (Lewandowski 2016) and responsible consumers (Borrello et al. 2017). As highlighted by McDowall et al. 2017), the origin of the concept emerged in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s, together with early policies of the EuropeanUnionmember states, drawing on ideas that can be traced to the 1970s. Driven by a desire to divert waste from landfill, the Netherlands and Germany pioneered concepts of waste prevention and reduction, with the waste hierarchy introduced to the Dutch Parliament in 1979. However, even acknowledging that CE was rooted in environmental economics, there is today a huge interdisciplinary framework underpinning CE. This new framework offers good prospect for gradual involvement of the present economic system, including production and consumption models. We can say that at the moment, CE has the supreme goal of promoting sustainable development through the dissociation of environmental pressure from economic growth (Ghisellini et al. 2016; Schandl et al. 2016; Bruel et al. 2019). According to Ghisellini et al. (2016), CE is a new economic system aiming to increase the efficiency of resource use to achieve improvements in the existing balance between economy, environment and society. In this line, the concept of CE has recently been proposed as a new development strategy that aims to mitigate the contradiction between the rapid economic growth and the shortage of raw materials and energy (Christis et al. 2019). Although there is no commonly accepted definition of CE so far, the core of CE is the closed flow of materials and the use of raw materials and energy through multiple phases (Gan et al. 2013). The ‘3R’ principles—reduction, reuse, and recycling of materials and energy—are often cited to describe the three possible approaches in practice (the goals of reduce, reuse, and especially recycle have become the only acceptable ways of disposing of waste (Yong 2007, Yellishetty et al. 2011, Samiha 2013, Ahmadi 2017, Huang et al. 2018). This concept has been pursued by many countries’ environmental policy makers as a potential strategy to solve existing environmental problems (Preston and Carr 2018). As one of the main objectives of governments is to promote the sustainable development of economy and society, it also helps to achieve sustainable environmental protection (Yuan et al. 2006). Once the high economic potential of CE has been recognized, in the European Union, different CE Action Plans have been proposed as new initiatives, changes or adaptations to legislation, mainly related to waste and landfills at the beginning. In 2015, a range of policy measures collectively known as the Circular Economy Package, and later replaced by the Closing the Loop-An Action Plan for the CE, were approved in Europe (COM2015). At present times the CE is a priority for Europe. Nearly 1 billion from Horizon 2020’s final Work Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues