Bakker et al., 2014, Bocken et al., 2016, EMF, 2013b, Rashid et al., 2013) focus on the environmental performance improvements of the Circular Economy rather than taking a holistic view on all three dimensions of sustainability, although this is also true for a range of authors in the latter field (e.g. Our research shows that most authors (e.g. The following two subsections first summarise the identified relationship types between the Circular Economy and sustainability, and then, the main similarities and differences between both concepts in literature.
They also stress the importance of better integrating environmental and social aspects with economic progress, and set Results Both concepts are essentially global in their nature, sharing concerns with the current state of technology, industrial production, and consumption, which might not only jeopardise future generations, but also present sources of unexplored competitive advantage. The previous sections summarised the history, definition, and relevance of sustainability and the Circular Economy. Starting with the former and concluding with the latter, this chapter briefly introduces the historical origins of the concepts, compares and synthesises the selected definitions, and discusses the notions' relevance. This section provides a short introduction to the two main concepts addressed in this research, sustainability and the Circular Economy. The paper concludes with final remarks on the contributions of this research, its limitations, and interesting fields for further research. This is followed by a discussion of our findings. Section 4 presents the results of the research, first illustrating the identified relationships between sustainability and the Circular Economy, before similarities and differences are contrasted. The subsequent section describes the research design by presenting the research questions and the methods employed, including the implemented snowballing and the outcomes of a bibliometric research that helped to determine the sample of articles that would initially be investigated. Section 2 covers a brief literature review that is introducing sustainability and the Circular Economy by presenting their origins, synthesising their conceptual definition, and illustrating their relevance for research and practice. Therefore, this research aims to contribute to conceptual clarity by investigating the similarities, differences, and relationships between both concepts in theory.
This has potential detrimental implications for the advancement of sustainability science and the diffusion of practices based on these concepts. Companies are also increasingly aware of the opportunities promised by the Circular Economy and have started to realise its value potential for themselves and their stakeholders (EMF, 2013b).ĭespite the concept's importance for academia, policymakers, and companies, the conceptual relationship between the Circular Economy and sustainability is not clear. The Circular Economy has also become an important field of academic research with a steep increase in the number of articles and journals covering this topic during the last decade. This becomes evident, for instance, in the comprehensive European Circular Economy package (European Commission, 2015) and the Chinese Circular Economy Promotion Law (Lieder and Rashid, 2016). To address these and other sustainability issues, the concept of the Circular Economy – while not entirely new – has recently gained importance on the agendas of policymakers (Brennan et al., 2015). Economic challenges, such as supply risk, problematic ownership structures, deregulated markets, and flawed incentive structures lead to increasingly frequent financial and economic instabilities for individual companies and entire economies (Sachs, 2015, Jackson, 2009). Societal expectations are not met due to issues such as high unemployment, poor working conditions, social vulnerability, the poverty trap, inter- and intragenerational equity, and widening inequalities (Banerjee and Duflo, 2011, Sen, 2001, Prahalad, 2004). Environmental problems, such as biodiversity loss, water, air, and soil pollution, resource depletion, and excessive land use are increasingly jeopardising the earth's life-support systems (Rockstrom et al., 2009, Jackson, 2009, Meadows et al., 2004, WWF, 2014). There is a pressing need to transition to more sustainable sociotechnical systems (Meadows et al., 2004, WBCSD, 2010 Seiffert and Loch, 2005, Markard et al., 2012).
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