The Circular Economy – A new sustainability paradigm?

While the terms Circular Economy and sustainability are increasingly gaining traction with academia, industry, and policymakers, the similarities and differences between both concepts remain ambiguous. The relationship between the concepts is not made explicit in literature, which is blurring their...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of cleaner production Vol. 143; pp. 757 - 768
Main Authors Geissdoerfer, Martin, Savaget, Paulo, Bocken, Nancy M.P., Hultink, Erik Jan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier Ltd 01.02.2017
Subjects
Circular business model
Circular Economy
Closed loop
Literature review
Sustainability
Sustainable development
Literature review
Closed loop
Circular Economy
Circular business model
Sustainable development
Sustainability
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:While the terms Circular Economy and sustainability are increasingly gaining traction with academia, industry, and policymakers, the similarities and differences between both concepts remain ambiguous. The relationship between the concepts is not made explicit in literature, which is blurring their conceptual contours and constrains the efficacy of using the approaches in research and practice. This research addresses this gap and aims to provide conceptual clarity by distinguishing the terms and synthesising the different types of relationships between them. We conducted an extensive literature review, employing bibliometric analysis and snowballing techniques to investigate the state of the art in the field and synthesise the similarities, differences and relationships between both terms. We identified eight different relationship types in the literature and illustrated the most evident similarities and differences between both concepts.
ISSN:0959-6526
1879-1786
DOI:10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.12.048