What is a circular economy?

Abstract

The essence of the circular economy lies in designing goods to facilitate disassembly and re-use, and structuring business models so manufacturers can reap rewards from collecting and refurbishing, remanufacturing, or redistributing products they make. A transition to a more circular economy means creating new industries and business models that focus on retaining the value of products and materials, and that redefine ownership by providing services rather than selling products. A circular economy is an industrial system that is restorative or regenerative by intention and design. An interpretation of a circular economy has been made by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in a series of reports that include an evolved set of principles and compelling arguments for making the transition. The idea and principles of a circular economy have evolved from many schools of thought into a coherent and highly compelling model that is starting to be applied by innovative organisations and individuals in many different industries.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 124 citations exist upstream.