Towards standards-based of circular economy: knowledge available and sufficient for transition?

ABSTRACT

The control of waste within the industrial, urban or rural sectors of activity, and the efficiency-effectiveness of waste management processes, is one of the main challenges of today’s society. Despite successive attempts over the last few decades, a sufficiently optimal control model has not been achieved. The transition to the Circular Economy seems to be the model of change necessary to achieve a society that is sustainably integrated into the planet. In this context, this work has the objective of knowing if the available knowledge base (theoretical, methodological and empirical) of the Circular Economy is sufficiently developed for implementation. With the results, a methodological guide of implementation of the Circular Economy is proposed for the management of the life cycle of industrial products. The methodology has a systematic approach that facilitates the management of the project and the process of design and development of the product following criteria of circularity; in addition, it allows to evaluate quantitatively the improvements reached in the economic and environmental levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Circular Economy
• closed-loop material flows
• circularity
• economy transition
• sustainability
• project management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.