A pathway to circular economy: Developing a conceptual framework for complex value assessment of resources recovered from waste

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThe 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. Crown

Financial Resources for the Circular Economy: A Perspective from Businesses

“…The results of this study also suggest that access to public funds and fiscal incentives may accelerate the development of eco-innovations, and that their effectiveness interacts, in particular, with firms' availability of external financing, in line with Cecere et al [68]. Empirical results regarding the effectiveness of subsidies (and tax incentives) to promote eco-innovation are not absolutely conclusive [135,136], although some authors show that public subsidies drive the development of eco-innovations [92,[137][138][139][140]. From our analysis, the relationship between the CE and indicators applied for eco-innovation measurement pointed out by Smol et al [100] is endorsed.…”

Business models in Circular Economy concept

“…Business needs Circular Economy to achieve the sustainability goals. Circular economy is next to such concepts as: dematerialization, zero-waste, eco efficiency, eco-design or industrial ecology one of sustainability approaches aiming at sustainable production and consumption through closing the production and energy cycles [Iacovidou et al 2017]. It evolved as an idea from different historical, ecological and economic fields [Murray et al 2015].…”

Guiding Future Research on the Valorisation of Shredder Fine Residues: A Review of Four Decades of Research

“…Another feature of this body of research is that most studies have only addressed one specific aspect of fines management at a time (e.g. a specific material characteristic or a particular recovery process), thereby disregarding that changing current disposal practices and achieving valorisation is a multi-faceted challenge influenced by several inter-related technical, economic, organizational, market and policy aspects (Andersson et al, 2019;Iacovidou et al, 2017;van Beers et al, 2009).…”