Circular economy and sustainability

Unlike the traditional take-make-consume-dispose approach, a circular economy seeks to respect environmental boundaries through increasing the share of renewable or recyclable resources while reducing the consumption of raw materials and energy. Emissions and loss of resources will thus be reduced. Approaches such as eco-design, sharing, re-using, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing products and materials, will play a significant role in maintaining the use of products, components and materials and retaining their value.

Circular Economy and Sustainability aims to bring a new approach of the key concepts of circular economy and sustainability, by combining the scientific disciplines of economy, management, engineering, technology, environment, and society. As circular economy is necessary today to promote the goals of sustainable development; these scientific areas are not independent to each other, but their relations, interactions and synergies exist and should be further developed and studied. Interdisciplinary approaches and multiple connections between these scientific areas are required not only to reach the sustainability goals but also to solve diverse environmental problems, expand technological limits and overcome potential economic disturbances.

This approach is expressed with new policies (command and control, market-based instruments, and circular public procurement), technological suggestions (e.g. technical cycle solutions), environmental engineering technologies (e.g., waste management, 3r strategies, water recycle, wastewater treatment and reuse, renewable energy), circular business models, circular innovations, circular management solutions, consumers’ behavior in circular economy, new circular economy products labels and social acceptance in circular economy. These topics could be classified in three levels; the micro-level (firm-level engineering and managerial level), meso-level (industrial ecology, industrial symbiosis, eco-clusters, eco-industrial parks), and macro-level (general policies, plans, green and sustainable entrepreneurship).