The Circular Economy: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Concept and Application in a Global Context

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Alan Murray ; Keith Skene ; Kathryn Haynes
• 关键词：Circular Economy ; Closed ; loop economy ; Sustainability ; Sustainable development
• 刊名：Journal of Business Ethics
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：140
• 期：3
• 页码：369-380
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Ethics; Business and Management, general; Management; Business Ethics; Quality of Life Research;
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-0697
• 卷排序：140

文摘

There have long been calls from industry for guidance in implementing strategies for sustainable development. The Circular Economy represents the most recent attempt to conceptualize the integration of economic activity and environmental wellbeing in a sustainable way. This set of ideas has been adopted by China as the basis of their economic development (included in both the 11th and the 12th ‘Five Year Plan’), escalating the concept in minds of western policymakers and NGOs. This paper traces the conceptualisations and origins of the Circular Economy, tracing its meanings, and exploring its antecedents in economics and ecology, and discusses how the Circular Economy has been operationalized in business and policy. The paper finds that while the Circular Economy places emphasis on the redesign of processes and cycling of materials, which may contribute to more sustainable business models, it also encapsulates tensions and limitations. These include an absence of the social dimension inherent in sustainable development that limits its ethical dimensions, and some unintended consequences. This leads us to propose a revised definition of the Circular Economy as “an economic model wherein planning, resourcing, procurement, production and reprocessing are designed and managed, as both process and output, to maximize ecosystem functioning and human well-being”.