Australia has intensified its circular economy (CE) efforts that demonstrate designing out waste while creating wealth. It has developed eco-industrial parks in metallurgy/metal industries, eco-cities and small-scale waste-to-wealth creation strategies. Mining has taken the lead in CE development with the eco-industrial areas at Kwinana, Western Australia, and Gladstone, Queensland. Easing up the waste burden, eco-efficiency and value addition are the direct benefits of circularizing the economy. Shortsightedness in looking up for opportunities across the supply chain, technological constraints, lack of policy coordination for business innovation, economic recession induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and lack of incentives to change behavior from linear to circular economy are among the barriers pointed out. A systematic review of published literature in Australian context was conducted to assess the state-of-the art circular economy development. We have found that Australia has to look into overcoming the barriers by putting in place policies and guidelines to nurture the current synergies, business relationships and trust among the firms in partnership, and more R & D to meet the demand for complementing technologies and to have cohesion over the current CE strategies, among others.

This paper discusses circular economy (CE) as an option to mitigate the environmental impacts of mining operations, and a framework based on the three dimensions of sustainability, the possible uses of mining wastes, the life cycle, and the systems approaches to determine the policies that will induce initiatives towards designing out wastes for a mining-based circular economy. Previous research has been reviewed to determine CE configuration and the basis for the framework to guide in the development of CE-related mining policies. The Chinese model of circular economy, noted for the introduction of industrial symbiosis through eco-industrial parks at the meso level, and public participation at the macro level, forms the basic structure of the framework aimed at curbing mining waste, and closing the loop in mining. Holistic research is important in taking proactive CE technology actions, strategic measures, and policies, which can use life cycle assessment (LCA) methods (environmental and social LCA and life cycle costing) and systems dynamic modeling. With systems dynamic modeling, the framework introduced in this work can be expanded to cover as many important aspects as possible, and can check for areas of policy resistance that have been the reason for most policy failures.

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