Abstract
People altered the biophysical environment upon which they depend through the overexploitation of resources and growing waste generation. Action is urgently needed to return the resource economy within planetary boundaries and safeguard human well-being, by realising an increasingly closed-loop system that maintains values of materials and products within a sustainable circular economy. Innovative technologies and business models must be developed and implemented, requiring convincing “business cases” for industry and government; why should they be interested in adopting circular, resource recovery practices? Despite multi-dimensional challenges facing people and their environment, and the ability of resource recovery to contribute to restoring environment, society and economy, arguments for circular practices are often overly focused on economic aspects. Economic growth is not a panacea and this article supports the preparation of better arguments by presenting expert insights on 37 themes to consider for a resource recovery business case. The most important themes cover 1) Economic, social, environmental and technical value of resources and 2) Regulatory change; focusing business cases on these is likely to deliver positive impacts regarding all identified themes. The article synthesises the old “growth will solve it-” with a new “multi-dimensional challenges and solutions” paradigm, suggesting that resource recovery should support multi-dimensional growth to partly redistribute economic benefits to social and environmental values through the preservation of technical, functional value of materials and products. Writing successful business cases for resource recovery requires inter-disciplinary collaboration, and sustained effort to complete and translate business cases into measurable impacts through changed practices outside academia.
Highlights
Resource Recovery from Waste, School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
Innovative technologies and business models must be developed and implemented, requiring convincing “business cases” for industry and government; why should they be interested in adopting circular, resource recovery practices? Despite multidimensional challenges facing people and their environment, and the ability of resource recovery to contribute to restoring environment, society and economy, arguments for circular practices are often overly focused on economic aspects
This study explored how academics can formulate a business case for resource recovery
Summary
Resource overexploitation and dissipation of wastes into the environment adversely impact on the Earth's capacity to sustain ecosystem services (Rockström et al, 2009). It is necessary to redefine progress and open the scope to a broader set of values including environmental, social and economic factors This alternative view on multi-dimensional progress needs to be linked to the circular economy to evolve away from measuring success in resource throughput expressed in monetary terms with little regard for future availability of finite resources and the impacts of their extraction, transformation, consumption and disposal. There still is a major gap between the obvious issues and practical solutions for global sustainable development and the rationales for individual local actors to create shared environmental, social, technical and economic values (explained in Section 2) (Dyllick and Muff, 2015) This hampers progress towards a sustainable, circular economy. What has been recommended to government and industry so far, what are the arguments for adopting a circular economy? Here a summary of key points from the extensive academic literature is provided
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
