Abstract
Established assessment methods focusing on resource recovery from waste within a circular economy context consider few or even a single domain/s of value, i.e. environmental, economic, social and technical domains. This partial approach often delivers misleading messages for policy- and decision-makers. It fails to accurately represent systems complexity, and obscures impacts, trade-offs and problem shifting that resource recovery processes or systems intended to promote circular economy may cause. Here, we challenge such partial approaches by critically reviewing the existing suite of environmental, economic, social and technical metrics that have been regularly observed and used in waste management and resource recovery systems' assessment studies, upstream and downstream of the point where waste is generated. We assess the potential of those metrics to evaluate ‘complex value’ of materials, components and products, i.e., the holistic sum of their environmental, economic, social and technical benefits and impacts across the system. Findings suggest that the way resource recovery systems are assessed and evaluated require simplicity, yet must retain a suitable minimum level of detail across all domains of value, which is pivotal for enabling sound decision-making processes. Criteria for defining a suitable set of metrics for assessing resource recovery from waste require them to be simple, transparent and easy to measure, and be both system- and stakeholder-specific. Future developments must focus on providing a framework for the selection of metrics that accurately describe (or at least reliably proxy for) benefits and impacts across all domains of value, enabling effective and transparent analysis of resource recovery form waste in circular economy systems.
Highlights
Current initiatives promoting a ‘circular economy’ build upon preceding research into resource efficiency (Ashby, 2016; Butterworth and Bleriot, 2014; embodied carbon (EC), 2015; Ghisellini et al, 2016; Gregson et al, 2015; Haas et al, 2015; Murray et al, 2015), and provide an imperative to reconsider our approach to resource recovery from waste (RRfW)
To make a significant step towards achieving this, a holistic evaluation of RRfW systems based on MCPs multi-dimensional ‘complex value’, i.e., the holistic sum of their environmental, economic, social and technical benefits and impacts and how these are distributed across the system over time, is increasingly required
This study reveals that existing frameworks, methods and tools currently used for assessing waste management and resource recovery systems do not adequately account for the complex value of MCPs across supply chain systems; this is because of the lack of accounting for all domains of value simultaneously
Summary
Current initiatives promoting a ‘circular economy’ build upon preceding research into resource efficiency (Ashby, 2016; Butterworth and Bleriot, 2014; EC, 2015; Ghisellini et al, 2016; Gregson et al, 2015; Haas et al, 2015; Murray et al, 2015), and provide an imperative to reconsider our approach to resource recovery from waste (RRfW). Transformation requires a shift in thinking such that RRfW is conceptualised and operationalised on the basis of preserving the value of materials, components and products (MCPs) by retaining their functionality for as long as possible, as underpinned by the rationale of a circular economy (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2012; Ghisellini et al, 2016) This concentrates on the direct reuse of products and components; but often the degree to which this can be achieved is limited owing to aging, design, performance (including environmental and resource efficiency performance), or recovery constraints. Even these slightly more sophisticated options have little to say about the prevention of dissipation of value into waste; the transition to a resource efficient circular economy requires approaches that allow a more holistic analysis and evaluation of value creation, appropriation and dissipation within the systems in question
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