Abstract
The circular economy (CE) is arising as a novel economic system that is restorative by design. In light of its capability to boost sustainable economic development and to cope with environmental challenges, it has recently attracted increasing attention from academics, practitioners, policymakers, and intergovernmental organizations. Despite the wide speculation on this issue, the scientific literature lacks a wide-ranging, systematic, and updated identification and classification of the main drivers and Critical Success Factors of CE initiatives, which appears increasingly necessary to facilitate future scientific work, practical implementations, and policy guidelines. With this aim, this paper develops a systematic literature review by starting with over 400 manuscripts. A final set of 55 selected papers was selected for singling out and classifying drivers and Critical Success Factors in the CE context. The results may provide clear indications for further research, may help business organizations in evaluating CE initiatives, and may guide policy makers in developing and refining CE normative frameworks.
Highlights
The circular economy (CE) is emerging as a novel approach to boost sustainable economic development and cope with environmental challenges and has recently attracted increasing consideration in discussions on industrial development [1,2,3].The traditional and still dominant linear economic model based on extracting-producing-using-discarding materials and energies is unsustainable [1,4]
It has been followed throughout the history of humanity, the linear economic model started to assert itself strongly during the industrial revolution in the 18th century, which ignored the environmental limits and the long-term damages caused to the whole world
CE is emerging as a novel approach in the broad context of sustainability
Summary
The traditional and still dominant linear economic model based on extracting-producing-using-discarding materials and energies is unsustainable [1,4]. It has been followed throughout the history of humanity, the linear economic model started to assert itself strongly during the industrial revolution in the 18th century, which ignored the environmental limits and the long-term damages caused to the whole world. Since the growing attention paid to the environmental problem and a more sustainable economic development, the CE concept and its application have attracted increasing attention from practitioners, academics, policymakers and intergovernmental organizations [1,6,7,8,9,10]. A significant number of studies have focused on the concepts defining the CE [11] and on explaining the relationship between sustainable development and CE [12]
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