文章基本信息

标题：Circularity in Practice: Review of Main Current Approaches and Strategic Propositions for an Efficient Circular Economy of Materials
本地全文：下载
作者：Benjamin Megevand ; Wen-Jun Cao ; Francesco Di Maio 等
期刊名称：Sustainability
印刷版ISSN：2071-1050
出版年度：2022
卷号：14
期号：2
页码：962
DOI：10.3390/su14020962
语种：English
出版社：MDPI, Open Access Journal
摘要：This paper aims to summarize, propose, and discuss existing or emerging strategies to shift towards a circular economy of materials. To clarify the landscape of existing circular practices, a new spectrum is proposed, from product-based strategies, where entire products go through several life cycles without being reprocessed, to material-based approaches, extracting, recycling, and reprocessing materials from the waste flow. As refillable packaging does not lose any functionality or value, when re-used through many life cycles, product-based strategies are globally extremely efficient and must be promoted. It appears however that their implementation is only possible at the scale of individual products such as packaging containers, relying on the cooperation of involved companies and consumers. It appears more and more urgent to focus as well on a more systematic and flexible material-oriented scheme. The example of circular glass recycling is a success in many countries, and technologies become nowadays available to extend such practices to many other materials, such as rigid plastics. An ideal would be to aim at an economy of materials that would imitate the continuous material cycle of the biosphere. Technological and business strategies are presented and discussed, aiming at a relevant impact on circularity.