Efficiency of circular economies is one of the most important areas of the improvement of economic growth in a circular way, that is, improving worldwide GDP. The issue of circular economies, namely their efficiency, is a current topic of evidence of many literary sources in the literature. This issue is solved in the conditions of the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. The goal of the study is to compare the circular efficiency within the Visegrád Group and efficiency of Visegrád Group countries to the European Union 28 average. Data envelopment analysis slack-based models are implemented to evaluate the output efficiencies of the selected subjects. Truncated regression is used to measure the impact of selected indicators on circular efficiency. The Visegrád Group countries are not among the most advanced in terms of recycling and the use of the circular economy, which was confirmed by this research. However, developments suggest significant improvements. The significance of this research lies in several benefits. One of the benefits is the perception of regional differences and the setting of EU cluster policies at the regional level. The idea of changing inputs is very significant since the outputs are oriented to the recycling rates of materials and waste. This research has shown that a higher level of GDP does not necessarily mean a higher level of efficiency of the circular economy.

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The article characterizes selected issues related to the method of performing environmental impact analyses. Particular attention was paid to the need for identifying environmental effects associated with the process of shaping beverage bottles. This study concerns the analysis of selected stages of the machine’s life cycle environmental impact in the specific case of the blow molding machine used in the production of bottles. Life cycle assessment analysis was performed using the SimaPro 8.4.0 software (The Dutch Company Pre Consultants). The CML 2 and ReCiPe2016 methods were chosen to interpret the lists of chemical emissions. Impact categories specific to the CML 2 model are: abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion, human toxicity, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and photochemical oxidation. Among all the considered impact categories, marine aquatic ecotoxicity was characterized by the highest level of potential harmful effects occurring during the bottle production process. A new aspect of the research is to provide updated and more detailed geographic data on Polish bottle production.