Circular Economy: Global Perspective

One-way model of production and consumption has been dominating over the past one and a half century in the globe. In the supply chain in this one-way model, the goods are manufactured from raw materials in production processes, sold, used, and subsequently at the end of its lifetime as the specific product is discarded as waste to landfill or incinerated. The raw materials are once extracted from the nature, usually discarded at the end of the use of a particular product.

Elements of the circular economy have been in play for many years in Australia. These elements have included cleaner production programmes, waste to landfill levies (tax on landfill disposal), collection and recycling of household packaging and paper, metals recycling, regional waste strategies, infrastructure planning and investment, waste and recycling legislation and other regulatory interventions under state-based environment protection acts.

Many developed countries have made great strides in addressing waste management, particularly since the environment came onto the international agenda in the 1960s, and there are many good practice examples available for the international community to learn from. However, the initial focus was on waste after it had been discarded, whereas now attention has moved upstream, addressing the problem at its source through, for example, designing out waste, preventing its generation, reducing both the quantities and the uses of hazardous substances, minimizing and reusing, and, where residuals do occur, keeping them concentrated and separate to preserve their intrinsic value for recycling and recovery, and preventing them from contaminating other waste that still has economic value for recovery.

Bhutan is widely renowned for its carbon negative status in the environmental arena. However, owing to its geographical location as a Himalayan country sandwiched between China and India, the influence of globalization from the north and south has drastically increased the rate of urbanization and economic activities in Bhutan over the years. This paper provides an account on waste management, policy, and initiatives taken by government, NGOs, and enterprises in Bhutan. Different streams of wastes are emerging and in particular, municipal solid wastes are serious waste management issues in Bhutan with a shift in consumption patterns and increasing population rate. Apart from the National Environment Commission (NEC) acting as an apex body for regulating and monitoring waste management, similar initiatives have been taken by local governments, other government agencies, private enterprises, and non-governmental organizations (NGO) to create litter-free and healthy environment by implementing 3Es and 4Rs towards circular economy. The concept of circular economy in Bhutan got introduced with the Waste and Climate Change Project (WWC) of NEC and WWF Bhutan. The circular economy concept is the main philosophy of the National Waste Management Strategy (NWMS) which aims to establish waste management as a national priority and provide information, logical steps and strategies required for its successful implementation. The NWMS aims to resolve data gaps, challenges, and issues between agencies regarding waste management. It would also ensure that waste management programmes are trickling down to the gross root systems fostering a national waste reduction, reuse, and recycling concept.

Canada, specifically Ontario, has become the first jurisdiction in the Americas to enact a comprehensive circular economy law, the Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Act, 2016 (“RRCEA”) (SO 2016 c. 12). Previously, waste diversion existed in Ontario under the Waste Diversion Act (“WDA”) (SO 2002, c 6), a government-managed scheme that was meant to oversee the diversion of target waste streams away from landfills. The WDA tasked Waste Diversion Ontario (“WDO”) to be the industry regulator, and the province designated industry-funded organizations (“IFOs”) as service providers to coordinate waste management activities for their respective industries. The fatal systemic flaw of this framework, however, was that these two bodies were placed between the “Producers” (namely the manufacturers, first importers, and brand owners) and the end-of-life supply chain. The RRCEA will allow the province to more effectively preserve and recover resources, divert materials from landfills, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from waste, with the overall aim of implementing a “circular economy.” Under the RRCEA, the Producers will be the primary resource recovery party, solely responsible for complying with the Ministry’s mandated obligations for resource recovery, with non-transferable liabilities. By naming the Producer as the operator of the product’s end-of-life (or “reverse”) supply chain, their decisions as to a product’s composition, content, and deconstruction attributes are now relevant to the waste management process—giving rise to an integrated circular economy market. Canada’s treatment of plastics gives interesting insight into how a circular economy might be implemented. Additionally, to address these requirements and liability issues, Producers are looking to Producer Responsibility Organizations (“PROs”) as waste management third parties to help address the new and often daunting obligations, as examined in this paper’s case study on the used tire industry in Ontario. To help implement RRCEA, Ontario has identified no less than 15 actions to help facilitate the smooth transition to a circular economy, with the express interest of creating scalable solutions which can then be mass-produced across North America.

Circular economy is devoted to improving resource efficiency and recycling rate. Its actions are being motivated by four major drivers: (i) regulatory control led by a mix of US states, European Union legislation, and China’s environmental law; (ii) competitive incentives for both cost decrease and technology innovation; (iii) stakeholder promotion related to brand reputation and greater transparency; and (iv) risks from supply chain broken caused by regional resource shortage and vis major event (Dauvergne and LeBaron in New Polit Econ 18(3):410–430, 2013). In China, these drivers and pressures have imposed evolution of circular economy.

What is circular economy? Wikipedia says: circular economy is a regenerative system in which resource input and waste, emission and energy leakage are minimised by slowing, closing and narrowing energy and material loops; this can be achieved through long-lasting design, maintenance, repair, reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing, recycling and upcycling.

Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) is a land-locked developing country in Southeast Asia. The total area of the country is 236,800 km². The total population as of 2017 was 6.8 million (World Bank 2019). Since the last two decades, the economy of Lao PDR has been growing significantly. Economic growth, population increase, rapid urbanization, and changing lifestyle are major contributions to growing environmental problems, especially solid wastes. In Vientiane Capital, wastes are generated approximately 650 tons per day, and only half of them are collected and disposed of properly in the landfill (VCOMS 2018). The same situation can be seen in secondary provinces, such as Luang Prabang, Savannakhet, Champassak, and other provinces across the country.

India is a fastest growing economy with unity in many diversities comprising of 28 states and nine union territories. The population in India as estimated in 2019 is at 1.37 billion based on the most recent UN data and 2011 census data. India is the second-most populous country. It is the seventh-largest country in the world, having total area of 3,287,263 km² (1,269,219 sq mi) measuring 3214 km (1997 mi) from north to south and 2933 km (1822 mi) from east to west. A land frontier of 15,200 km (9445 mi) and a coastline of 7,516.6 km (4671 mi) exist in India (Annual Report 2016–17).

Circular economy (CE) is still in its infancy in Israel. In the past years, the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection (IMoEP) and the Israeli Ministry of Economy and Industry (IMoE&I) have started consolidating numerous plans toward achieving CE. Yet the main activities in this field in the past three decades were related to waste management and recycling, in an effort for closing the municipal solid waste (MSW) loop as a significant key factor in achieving a CE. The measures that were taken have been mainly reflected in regulation and legislation conducted by the IMoEP for increasing the overall recycling rates in Israel. The case of Israel, however, illustrates that even when there is an extensive regulation including laws, economic penalties, and financial incentives such as landfill levy, this does not guarantee achievements or improvements in MSW treatment and promote CE. The development of suitable infrastructure to enable achievement of the desired results is necessary. This chapter presents the main steps taken to promote recycling and additional plans consolidated for achieving CE in Israel.

Italy is located in the south-west part of Europe with a population of about 60.6 million of inhabitants and a gross domestic product of about 1,934,798 M US$ in 2017. Italy operates in the wider legal framework of the European Union (EU) legislation that is internationally recognized as one of the most advanced approaches in the sectors of environmental protection, sustainable development and waste management. The broad concept of sustainability entails, among the others, also the preservation of the environment quality and of the resources of the earth for the future generations. In this context takes places the concept of circular economy (CE) based on the circular use of resources. An important sector in which circular use of resource was successfully implemented since 1991 was the waste management. The directive 91/156/EEC (CD 1991) formally introduced in the legal framework of waste management the concept of the waste management hierarchy establishing the priority goals to be pursued with a hierarchic order in waste management (Fig. 1): Prevention, Reuse, Recycling, Recovery and Disposal. From the hierarchy was also extrapolated the 3R concept based on Reuse, Recycle and Recover. The same directive introduced also the concept of extended producer responsibility (EPR) that is another fundamental pillar for enhancing the recycling of waste. These basic concepts during the years were updated and improved but never replaced or repealed by the successive directives. Legal and economic support resulted key factors for a successful implementation of CE even if it is necessary to size these activities in each specific market. Large differences were detected in the sector of the municipal solid waste compared to the ones generated by industrial and commercial sectors. Long-term efforts which aimed to the implementation of the legal framework in the sector lead in about 8 years to a reduction of the amount of waste disposed of about 33%. Furthermore, latest data available shows that this positive trend is still increasing. Socio-economic indicators showed that there is a general decrease of waste generated and that the paradigm between the increase of GDP and families’ expenditures and waste generation is starting to be capsized. Different results were detected for the waste generated in industrial and commerce sectors. Even if the high level of recycling that in the 2014 was of about 85%, their effective prevention seems not to be successfully pursued yet.

A circular economy is a system based on economic and industrial concepts that advocates reusing of products and raw materials so as to maximize the restorative capacity of natural resources. Circular economy attempts to minimize value destruction in the overall system and to maximize value creation in each link in the system. The main benefit of this kind of economy is the reduction of environmental pressure through minimizing emissions of harmful products such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and methane among others thus resulting into a cleaner world without rising temperatures and other corresponding negative consequences.

Circular economy is a concept that aims to improve resource efficiency by minimizing resource consumption and waste generation. The implementation of circular economy can be conducted at three levels: in single enterprise or group of enterprises, in a group of collocated firms and at the city or municipal level. Currently, implementation of circular economy in Malaysia is at firm level. There is a lack of legal framework on the implementation of circular economy in Malaysia. However, there are certain sections and regulations in Environmental Quality Act 1974, Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management Act 2007 and in Environmental Quality (Scheduled Waste) Regulation 2005, respectively, that promote resource circulation. Nationwide initiatives taken to promote circular economy are inclusion of integration of sustainable production and consumption, reduction of 40% of greenhouse gas emissions intensity from GDP compared to 2005 level and 22% of recycling of MSW, in Eleventh Malaysian Plan. Additionally, SWCorp has launched SWCorp Strategic Plan to promote sustainable solid waste management services, and CIDB has initiated CITP that has a target of incorporating 20% of recycled construction and demolition waste (tonnage) by year 2020 from baseline of 2016. Also, there are guidelines on coprocessing and proposals on establishment of industrial ecology by DOE. A few case studies show implementation of circular economy in manufacturing industries. The benefits of these implementations were reduction in energy and resource consumption, reduction in waste generation, protection of environment and human health, cost savings by reusing or recycling waste and additional profit gains by selling waste to potential buyers. Several opportunities of sustainable waste management and resource circulation have been highlighted in this chapter such as manufacturing of bioproducts and butanol from biomass to coprocessing between ELVs and construction industry. To successfully implement circular economy, top-down and bottom-up approach is required, and currently, Malaysia does not have explicit top-down and bottom-up approaches.

Solid waste management remains an ever-increasing issue in small island development states like Mauritius, with landfilling being the main disposal option as opposed to more sustainable solutions like recycling and resource recovery. This article provided an overview of circular economy, the initiatives taken towards promotion of recycling and the challenges faced by the recycling industry in Mauritius. While some recycling is carried out on the island, this is still in its infancy stage due to several obstacles faced by the recycling industry such as lack of financial incentives, lack of critical mass of recyclables and poor quality of recyclables. However, based on the several forthcoming projects to boost circular economy in Mauritius, it is expected that the solid waste management system is called for a major overhaul in the future, with major focus on recycling and resource recovery.

Nigeria is a lower middle-income country and is ranked as the largest economy in Africa with a gross domestic product of 444.92 billion (www.​imf.​org). The country is located on the western coast of Africa, has an area of 923, 763 km² and is bounded by Benin Republic in the west, Niger Republic in the north, Cameroun in the east and Gulf of Guinea in the south.

Circular economy is a principle of economic activity that aims to ensure that resources remain in the economy for as long as possible. This may be achieved by reducing raw material consumption, waste generation, emissions and energy consumption. The waste and recycling industry represent the largest part of the circular economy today, and it is estimated that more than 600 million tons of wastes can be recycled or reused in Europe (EC 2015).

Korean economy is characterized by the service-centered industrial structure and heavy industries are regarded as main source of economic growth. Rapid industrialization in Korea had been achieved by high rate of economic growth by export-driven heavy industry.

The presented paper shows the current importance of the CE (circular economy) to the sustainable development of the Republic of Serbia. Following the European Commission’s decision back from 2015 regarding the transformation of the linear economy into the circular economy, several laws were introduced in Serbia and are in the process of implementation, with the goal to stimulate investments in the CE Waste Management. The amendments to the Waste Management Law also give significant contribution to the CE development. The Ministry of Environmental Protection has signed an cooperation agreement with the National Alliance for Local Economic Development (NALED) regarding sustainable development of the CE in Serbia. International cooperations with institutions such as GIZ, OSCE, etc., are as well of significant importance to the CE development. This paper provides a numerous examples of good CE practice in Serbia. Serbian Chamber of Commerce, through cooperation with the Permanent Conference of Cities and Municipalities (SCTM), gives their contribution to the development of CE by supporting various activities in the economic field and the green jobs openings. In the future development, period is expected that CE should significantly increase GDP.

The status of circular economy (CE) in Thailand is reviewed in this chapter. The current CE practices and policy instruments used towards sustainable resource management in Thailand are presented as well. CE indicators for Thailand are extensively studied and summarized in the paper. Based on the review, it is established that the existing policies and programs on CE are focused more towards 3R concepts and less on other sub-sects of CE such as products-as-services, next life sales, product transformation, collaborative consumption, etc. Currently, CE indicators are primarily based on 3R concepts, whereas it is recommended that the other sub-sects of CE should also be taken into consideration to measure the actual CE progress. Employing packaging waste in Thailand as a case study, the current circular economy practice and key barriers to CE implementation were assessed to propose appropriate policy measures for sustainable waste and resources management. There has been an increase in packaging waste in the municipal solid waste (MSW) stream, of which plastic poses a key challenge in the urban waste stream. The current flow of packaging waste is predominated by recycling as downcycling. Most packaging waste remaining at landfills is one-time-use packaging. According to the comprehensive assessment, consumers had positive attitudes towards 3R practices and were conscious of waste problems. Economic incentives and regulatory instruments in line with a new waste management policy framework are recommended to overcome the barriers hindering CE implementation. Packaging waste management policy framework and policy measures are established through this study.

The European Union has adopted legislation and other supporting policies across a range of areas to facilitate the development of a Circular Economy. Building on earlier initiatives on waste management and resource efficiency, the policies coalesced in the 2015 Circular Economy Action Plan. This sets out a series of actions covering several issues, with a particular focus on resource efficiency, improved waste management and support for innovation. EU waste law has been revised promoting increased recycling, and most recently to tackling the growing problem of single-use plastics. However, while there are actions to support waste prevention, there are not legal targets on this issue. There are still challenges for joined-up action to deliver a Circular Economy. This includes addressing the nature of consumption by citizens, as well as technical issues such as how secondary materials meet objectives in chemicals and product legislation. A further challenge is the wide diversity of waste and materials management across the EU, such as very different recycling rates between countries. Delivering a Circular Economy means leaders needing to push with innovation and laggards needing help to achieve basic waste and material objectives.

Circular economy, an economic system where waste is utilized as an economic input, is currently the subject of much interest. Methods to incorporate all wastes into circular economy have not been developed. This paper discusses the current status and options for including plastics wastes in circular economy in the USA. Utilizing some plastics wastes as fuel is the most feasible path to doing so at present. Completely closed-loop circular economy for plastics would require fundamental changes in how plastics-based products are designed and manufactured.

The chapter presents the situation of waste generation and waste management in Vietnam, a middle-income country that has the fastest growth economies within the last 30 years. Along with the development, the country is now faced with the increase of waste in many types, especially the domestic waste, while the infrastructure for waste management is still inadequate. Vietnam has not any specific term on circular economy; nevertheless, the necessary of circle the natural resources has been emphasized in many momentous legislation documents and also found in many actual sub-models for recycle and reuse of waste. In fact, the volume of recycled materials in Vietnam is still small comparing to the input of the economy, and still far from its target on reducing the landfill rate of collected waste. Because of that, in the near future, Vietnam is still focused on 3R policy to build a proper infrastructure before applying the circular economy concept and frame for the sustainable development of the country.