Sustainability and Dimensions of a Nexus Approach in a Sharing Economy

Abstract

Increasing global resource consumption puts the availability of natural mineral resources under significant pressure. One strategy to overcome this trend is the decoupling of economic growth and resource consumption and the application of circular economy approaches. These approaches aim at closing material cycles across sectoral boundaries. Beside these attempts, there are further options for action aimed at minimization of resource consumption through resource sharing approaches. This study investigates resource-saving potentials on different scales namely on a personal scale through sharing goods and services, but also in the frame of industrial symbiosis through sharing of secondary resources at a company scale. The environmental effects have been quantified using life cycle assessment examples for these two simulated cases. The results show for both resource consumption levels, resource savings potentials of up to 2 powers of ten, that can particularly be proven regarding the impact category 'fossil resource depletion'. The emergence of industrial symbiosis can be identified by six factors: Resource, government, economy, company, technology, and society. The cases simulated in the study are supported by empirical evidence from real-life examples, which consider the mentioned factors.

A Literature Review to Propose a Systematic Procedure to Develop “Nexus Thinking” Considering the Water–Energy–Food Nexus

“…The main topics found in the reviewed papers included "politics" [75,[122][123][124][125], "economics" [118], "climate change" [125][126][127][128][129][130], "water, energy and food security" [5,131], "crises and risks" [55,61,132], "sustainable development" [20,133], and "governance" [16,38,41,57,134].…”

“…In terms of the environment, we found the widest range of contexts were studied within this approach, including themes involving (a) the circular economy [20,73,117,118], (b) ecosystem services [94,100,101], (c) the green economy [63], (d) sustainable development goals [17,119], (d) governance of nexus [75], (f) the nexus in urban systems [3,76,120,121], and (g) interdependencies between water and energy in environmental certifications [45].…”

“…The main topics found in the reviewed papers included "politics" [75,[122][123][124][125], "economics" [118], "climate change" [125][126][127][128][129][130], "water, energy and food security"…”

Recycling of Communal Waste: Current State and Future Potential for Sustainable Development in the EU

“…Development of waste and its use have been studied by a number of authors from various points of view [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41], discussing various aspects of the waste hierarchy [11].…”

“…The energy potential of waste, which can ensure sustainable development as well as energy security, has been studied by Bajić et al [31]. Due to the use of global resources, there is a need for decoupling of economic growth and resource consumption by application of circular economy approaches [32]. Aguilar-Hernandez et al [33] applied circularity to waste management, closing supply chains, product lifetime extension, and resource efficiency, showing that residual waste management can be modeled by increasing the amount of waste flows absorbed by the waste treatment sector.…”