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Comprehensiveness of circular economy assessments of regions: a systematic review at the macro-level

Van Bueren, Bart J A, Iyer-Raniga, Usha, Leenders, Mark A A M, Argus, Kevin·2021·Environmental Research Letters
DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ac209c
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Abstract

The circular economy (CE) is emerging as a solution for a thriving economy within regional and planetary boundaries for environment and social justice. CE is multifaceted with interconnected processes and therefore rather difficult to assess comprehensively. This paper reviewed the corpus of macro-level CE assessments, to find the best practices in CE assessments of regions scaling from neighborhoods to planetary. The extensive content analysis on the corpus of 165 studies used a novel mixed methods of meta-analysis, taxonomy and integrative review. This review investigates the comprehensiveness of CE assessments. Findings include three types of CE performance monitoring, four types of resource clustering, five scales, and a 5-step procedure to evaluate CE. CE can be monitored on: (a) absolute performance, quantifying economic resource-input, stock and waste-output; (b) efficiency performance, monitoring the optimization of CE processes similar to recycling, reuse, or even sharing and virtualizing; (c) policy performance to monitor strategies from regional stakeholders. Resource clustering can create hierarchies by metrics, uses, system-boundaries, or emergy. Identified scales are: XL for the planet; L for continents; M for large provinces, states and smaller countries; S for cities; and, XS for neighborhoods. Scales assist in comparing and benchmarking, but are also required for a proposed policy of localizing CE. This review found the ReSOLVE-framework as relatively comprehensive on CE processes. Also, multiple knowledge gaps were identified among resources, processes and regions. This review aids CE knowledge accumulation across regions and scales, to accelerate implementing the CE.

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Image 2
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Figure 3 Classification into scales XL-XS as sublevel from macro-level.
Figure 3 Classification into scales XL-XS as sublevel from macro-level.CC-BY · From the PDF
Figure 5 Years of publication of studies, with details of region location and scale. Note that one publication can assess several locations and scales, therefore the total of locations and scales is larger than the total of publications.
Figure 5 Years of publication of studies, with details of region location and scale. Note that one publication can assess several locations and scales, therefore the total of locations and scales is larger than the total of publications.CC-BY · From the PDF
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Figure 9 A conceptual framework from industrial ecology, based on [94, 95]. The economic system is depicted as sub-system of the eco system, with input and output as their interaction, resulting in a 'shrinking parent' as the economic system devours the eco system. Regeneration is the capacity of the eco system to restore the waste created from throughput of the economic system. Loop are the CE processes that make a reversed resource flow, such as recycle, remanufacture, refurbish and compost . This systems approach only depicts material flows, it is not comprehensive for assessing processes like share, optimize, virtualize, exchange and the TBL.
Figure 9 A conceptual framework from industrial ecology, based on [94, 95]. The economic system is depicted as sub-system of the eco system, with input and output as their interaction, resulting in a 'shrinking parent' as the economic system devours the eco system. Regeneration is the capacity of the eco system to restore the waste created from throughput of the economic system. Loop are the CE processes that make a reversed resource flow, such as recycle, remanufacture, refurbish and compost . This systems approach only depicts material flows, it is not comprehensive for assessing processes like share, optimize, virtualize, exchange and the TBL.CC-BY · From the PDF
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Image 11
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Metadata

Authors
Van Bueren, B. J. A., Iyer-Raniga, U., Leenders, M. A. A. M., & Argus, K.
Venue
Environmental Research Letters
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Published
2021-09-16
Volume
16
Issue
10
Pages
103001
ISSN
1748-9326
DOI
10.1088/1748-9326/ac209c
Cited by
30
References
2
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