The Emergence of Circular Economy: A New Framing Around Prolonging Resource Productivity

By Fenna Blomsma, Geraldine Brennan. 2017

1,114 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this article, we use Hirsch and Levin's notion of umbrella concepts as an analytical lens, in order to articulate the valuable catalytic function the circular economy (CE) concept could perform in the waste and resource management debate. We realize this goal by anchoring the CE concept in this broader debate through a narrative approach. This leads to the insight that whereas the various resource strategies grouped under the CE's banner are not new individually, the concept offers a new framing of these strategies by drawing attention to their capacity of prolonging resource use as well as to the relationship between these strategies. As such, the CE offers a new perspective on waste and resource management and provides a new cognitive unit and discursive space for debate. We conclude by discussing research opportunities for the industrial ecology (IE) community relating to the concept's theoretical development and its implementation. Specifically, we pose that reinvigorating and growing the social science aspects of IE is required for both. After all, it is in understanding and facilitating the collective implementation of any idea, also the CE concept, that the potential lies for shaping our material future.

Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ff5fd863b78d9401323d73a6fed8ffb59b074ce3

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Citations in the corpus

A taxonomy of circular economy indicators (2018, methodology): “e the importance of indicators in taking the circularity to the next level. In fact, advancing the discussion of the CE to a higher level requires to reach a shared understanding and common language (Blomsma and Brennan 2017). For instance, assessment methods such as the use of indicators can play a”
The Circular Economy at a Crossroads: Technocratic Eco-Modernism or Convivial Technology for Social Revolution? (2020, background): “less, the most influential field to the formulation of CE paradigm is the one of industrial ecology which established the concept of industrial metabolism (Blomsma and Brennan 2017). Starting from different theoretical premises, Boulding (1966) pointed out”
Transforming the bio-based sector towards a circular economy - What can we learn from wood cascading? (2020, background): “…collected a wide variety of CE definitions, principles and interpretations in order to provide a systematic overview for further research and practical applications (e.g., Blomsma and Brennan, 2017; Geissdoerfer et al., 2017; Ghisellini et al., 2016; Kirchherr et al., 2017; Murray et al., 2017).”
Circular economy as an essentially contested concept (2018, background): “Apart from established research fields e.g. ecological economics, which has a long tradition in recycling and its related issues (Georgescu-Roegen, 1971; Daly, 1996; Ring, 1997; Boulding, 1966; Ayres, 1999), CE also provides a natural point of departure in other research streams.”
The circular economy: New or Refurbished as CE 3.0? — Exploring Controversies in the Conceptualization of the Circular Economy through a Focus on History and Resource Value Retention Options (2017, neutral): “In line with other authors (Hultman and Corvellec, 2012; Blomsma and Brennan, 2017), we establish as one of decisive elements of a more transformative view of CE, nuanced material hierarchies as operationalization principle of CE, sometimes called R-hierarchies or imperatives.”