Talk:Circular economy

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2019 and 26 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Dvecheve. Peer reviewers: KristenTomberlin, Rbutello.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:05, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2021 and 24 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Nm462.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:05, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Merge sections "Emergence of the idea" and "Related concepts"?
The related concepts seems to be central to the emergence of the circular economy concept. Would propose to merge both sections.Drecohack (talk) 10:20, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

"Related concepts" is just that, concepts that are related but should not be expanded any further. Why not simply move them in the SEE ALSO section at the end of the page? I suggest: (1) removing the SUSTAINABILITY heading /  (2) move "Scope", "Background", "Emergence of the Idea" and "Moving away from the Linear model" into HISTORY & AIMS  /  (3) remove "Cradle To Cradle" Mobinow (talk) 22:49, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

New section adds little – delete?
The new section, "Strategic Management and the Circular Economy" seems to be quite a particular debate around a rather obscure book and a commercial consulting service from Worldynamics Pty.ltd. Delete? Ajr1990 (talk)

I feel the section is highly relevant and it should be further expanded rather than deleted. From a theoretical perspective, strategic management might still represent a niche aspect of the CE conversation, but in the real world it is crucial and helps companies define what processes to follow. The book appears to be legit. It has been the subject of a 3 pages review published by the Journal of Sustainable Business and Management Solutions in Emerging Economies; it received the appraisal of leading scholars like Nancy Bocken, Florian Lüdeke-Freund and Lára Jóhannsdóttir; and Google Scholar is reporting a growing number of references in 'A' journals like Waste Management and Sustainable Production & Consumption. It might instead be reasonable to remove the last sentence and corresponding reference "This concern is today confirmed by the results of ongoing monitoring studies like the Circular Readiness Assessment." Also the subsection "Circular Carbon Economy" should be removed or placed elsewhere. Mobinow (talk) 22:35, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Combination of concepts without source in third paragraph
In "To achieve models that are economically and environmentally sustainable the circular economy focuses on areas such as design thinking, systems thinking, product life extension, and recycling", Design thinking, systems thinking, product life extension, and recycling seem to be rather randomly combined concepts that are only loosely connected to the Circular Economy. The selection of these concepts seems dubious and no source is provided where they come from. Especially after a good combination of key concepts with a very reliable source in the first paragraph of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.184.3 (talk) 12:41, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

The section "Framework" should be deleted as is. There is a similar categorisation by the EMF, who call it "schools of thought", which could replace it, if necessary. Ajr1990 (talk) 12:18, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Link to Japanese article
I don't know how to link to articles in other languages anymore, so I'm going to have to ask that someone who watches this one do it. There is a corresponding article in the Japanese Wikipeda under 循環型社会. Many thanks. Jim_Lockhart (talk) 00:43, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

An editorial
There is no greater nonsense than a circular economy. The concept reminds me of perpetum mobile. If you are trained in business and economics, then you might be aware that cycles exists, but circles do not in this field of human endeavors. You may not like facing the end of resources, just like parasites hate to lose their hosts, but after all the living world does not seem to favor anything endless, including a circle around which you still need fuel to go round, remember. Development is NOT a synonym of growth. But most businesses crash if they reach beyond their means. Watch my lips.

Too technical
After reading this article I honestly still have no idea what a circular economy is. If anything I'm more confused. Something about recycling was all I was able to glean from all the technical jargon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.246.13.30 (talk) 09:34, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

No opinions - just facts please.
Regarding the first comment that the circular economy is rubbisch, I don't feel we should voice opinions here just comments on readability of the topic or factual additions. I for one think it is the way to go but I don't feel this is the place to start a discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.91.223.71 (talk) 11:21, 25 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, I would say that a lot of this article reads as an advocacy piece, not an encyclopedia article. Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 14:24, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100721060405/http://www.community.blueeconomy.de:80/the_principles.php to http://www.community.blueeconomy.de/the_principles.php

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Feedback and Suggestions
I am a new editor to Wikipedia and would like to leave some suggestions for potentially improving this page regarding the circular economy.

As previous editors have mentioned, the article is quite technical and full of jargon. However, I have seen several helpful diagrams of the circular economic model and I think including one of these visual aids would be really helpful. The Ellen Macarthur Foundation has a great diagram which shows the restorative potential for both technical and biological material cycles. It may be helpful to add this in or a similar diagram.

Additionally, the final section of the page discusses Europe and its movement towards a circular economy. Using Europe as inspiration, Canada and the US have both taken strides to become more circular and perhaps the North American perspective could be mentioned in a new section.

As I become more familiar with the site, I will make some additions myself but for now, I just wanted to make those suggestions.

Mtp109 (talk) 19:03, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

The circular economy (CE) is a political concept at the core of the ideology of many green activists. This is a fact, not a value judgment. The European Commission joined the club of stakeholders pushing for the CE, when it published its Coms on this topic. The confusion that readers feel in reading the article is due to the fact that this is not acknowledged at the beginning. This is particularly troublesome, when scientific papers refer to it as if it were part of some kind of basic solid science. There is no problem with an ideology, when it is presented as such. QuousqueCatilina (talk) 07:44, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Promotional content
" The Ellen MacArthur Foundation works with business, governments and education to help explain the concepts and benefits of a circular economy. The Foundation's diagram is often used to illustrate a circular economy, but for those new to the concept, it can be difficult to understand. "

The paragraph above, particularly the 1st sentence, is clearly aimed at promoting the role of one specific organisation. It serves no purpose in explaining what the circular Economy is.

It felt like I was reading the Foundation's own website. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marcio1marques (talk • contribs) 12:01, 12 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I rewrote it slightly more to try to make the text more NPOV. Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 14:29, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Origin of Phrase
It would be useful to cite the origin of the phrase. One link had suggested the phrase traced to Boulding's 1966 essay, but reading this essay I don't see him use the phrase. Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 14:26, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

framework change to related
The article has a number of sections under "framework" which list the following: Systems thinking, Biomimicry, Industrial ecology, Cradle to cradle, Blue economy, and "The Biosphere Rules", without clearly referencing how these fit into "circular economy". Each one of these has their own Wikipedia article, so I am relabelling this "related concepts", and shortening each to just an overview (since the reader would to better to go to the main article on each of these). Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 14:31, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Notes for the scope
The two paragraphs under scope are missing the citations and are exactly written in this website https://www.chinadenmark.com/shared-economy-shared-happiness/. Does anyone have a reference for those statements? Darlene Echeverria 15:42, 1 April 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dvecheve (talk • contribs)

Circular economy and plastic solution
Moved this entire section here below from article to this talk page as unsourced. Also seems flawed, ie use of wood is more environmental if taken from production forests (thus intented specifically for this use), and use of plastic waste as insulation seems very controversial (that's just downcycling, and may give problems when buildings, ... need to be dismantled (and recycled as per cradle to cradle method). In my view, probably better to refocus on (plastic-based) food packaging and EU ban on single use plastics, ....

People are using everyday goods which contains plastic and most of the goods are disposable which are transformed into a waste easily. It is hard to imagine a scale of plastic pollution from an example of one household but we can check the analysis of plastic waste in the world.

Production of plastic in the world began in mid-20th century. According to the US universities, production of plastic in the world was 2 million tons per year in 1950. Comparing the figures, production of plastic in 2015 was 380 million tons. In the same study, 8.3 billion tons of plastic was produced in the time span on 1950-2015 from where 6.3 billion tons have become a waste. Only 9% of plastic waste was recycled, 12% was insinuated and 79% (4.9 billion tons) were dumped in the dumping locations or wasted in environment.

8.3 billion tons of plastic is too much to comprehend. However, we can compare this volume to more familiar objects. For example, 8.3 tonnes of plastic are the same as 822,000 Eiffel tower, 80 million blue whale and 1 billion elephants.

According to the data, half of the consumed plastic was manufactured in last 13 years. Therefore, plastic manufacture tendency is rapidly growing and if it continues the same pace, there will be around 12 billion tones of plastic accumulated in the dumpsters and environment by the year of 2050.

Plastic pollution is one of the most important challenges of environment. In order to tackle this challenge, it is important to start finding new ways of finding alternative solutions of living without a plastic and use already wasted plastic in different forms. It is also important to have strong policies existing in the world which might also include raising awareness in communities about plastic pollution and its consequences, promoting recycling, reducing manufacturing and usage of plastic.

The major contributors of plastic pollution are developing countries as there is not enough awareness nor any recycling factories or spaces so majority of plastic waste is directly dumped in the nature. Scientists conducted a research about tendencies of plastic pollution in oceans and concluded that around 95% of plastic is dumped from the following 10 rivers: Niles, Indus, Ganges, Yamuna river, yellow river, Niger, Amur river, Hai river, Mekong and pearl river. Connecting similarities of these rivers, it is clear that plastic waste is coming from the countries and cities which profit from these rivers for everyday life and then the waste produced is going through the rivers to oceans.

Circular economy is a familiar business model for developed countries. This model significantly changed the previous business model of using disposable goods and oppositely, used good and materials can be regenerated fully and can be consumed again. This means that resources are upcycled and used again as well as manufactured goods so nothing is going to be called as a waste and dumped in the dumpsters rather then will be given a second life in different forms.

EU member states were one of the first which started talking about circular economy, developing an idea and implementing in their own states. Research shows that circular economy can profit around 90 billion Euros and can create 600 000 new job places by 2030. Countries which contribute the most in circular economy are: Germany, UK, France, Austria, Italy.

As one of the examples of circular economy and plastic waste reduction is a plastic waste insulation re-use PET.

Construction of energy efficient houses enables saving energy and reduces negative influence on environment. It is also very critical to develop energy efficient in rural areas where energy resources are scarce.

People living in rural areas mostly use wood resources for heating. Unbalanced usage of wood has negative consequences on forests and on ecosystem in whole. Therefore, it is important to implement alternative ways of reducing deforestation and growing energy efficiency in rural areas.

As an alternative method, using plastic waste for thermal insulation of houses comes in handy. This method has several advantages:


 * 1) Reducing plastic waste in environment
 * 2) Thermally insulated buildings;
 * 3) Reducing an import of expensive thermal insulation materials
 * 4) Reducing usage of wood

Thermal insulation method is initially very affective is plastic bottles, PET s are used as materials. PET bottles need to be very well washed and dried as the bottles create humidity once in warm which reduces the effects of thermal insulation. If humidity is high in the building, thermal conductivity is higher, hence thermal insulation is low.

Thermal insulation with PET bottles conduct less heat then common concrete or brick walls. Manufacturing thermal insulation with PET bottles is easy and can be done with the help of secondary polyethylene fiber sacks. PET bottles need to be replaced in the sack and the thickness of the sack depends on a climate and temperature and it varies between 5-15 cm. Such sucks can be used on ceilings, walls as well as on the roof and for the insulation of floors as well. Thermal insulation with PET bottles is not dangerous for general health as PET bottles do not degrade and do not eject any harmful substances. The most heat is lost due to bad insulation in most buildings as heated air flows from below to up hence it is essential to thermally insulate ceilings and roofs.

There are different methods for thermally insulating walls as typically there are different types of wall in the buildings. A building where insulation is inside two walls warm up late but it maintains heat for a long time as first walls heat up and then an insulation in between. If there is only one wall and an insulation, a wall heats up easily.

Installing thermal insulation is possible either in finished buildings as well as buildings which are in the building process. It is important to find perfect parameters for an insulation and for an owner.

Thermal insulation with PET technology is very cheap compared to traditionally used thermal materials. Investing on PET insulation is 5 times cheaper although it does have a big insulation capacity which reduces energy waste for 30-35 %.

Heavy Cleanup Required, IMO.
Tone is more like a thesis paper or featured news story. There's also quite a lot repetition of the same statement within a couple sentences of each other, which almost reads like a school paper attempting to reach a minimum length without substance. Though, it seems much of the content or sources are translated from French, which may contribute to that.

Overall, there also may just be an extreme excess of content written here for the specific subject matter. At least that is how it appears, though it may be warranted if sufficiently notable and backed by the sources cited. Speaking of which it does seem to also draw heavily upon only a select few sources in particular... which shouldn't be the case in such a long article.

Generally, how much of this content is really about the specific topic of "circular economics" rather than just an amalgamation of various environmental/sustainability related subjects? H iddenL emon //  talk  08:20, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Found a recent, peer-reviewed article on the conversion of waste plastic into vanillin
I wasn't sure where to add it. This article needs a bit of work. I had trouble figuring out where the new citation should go, but it's a real-world example of a circular economy. The article was published in June 2021 in Green Chemistry:. I would love to see this citation (and perhaps a bit about it) added to the article, but at the moment, I don't have the time to figure out where it goes. --Chemkatz (talk) 18:15, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Missing reference to a quotation
In the textile industry sub-section of industries implementing the CE, there is a quote from Eileen Fisher that lacks a reference. I would love to add a sentence about other companies in 2021 implementing the model in the fashion industry (such as the denim brand boyish) - I'm curious if this would be a valuable addition? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nm462 (talk • contribs) 04:34, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Can anybody provide more info about Steve D. Parker? Thanks
I'm now translating this article into traditional Chinese. Reason for my attempt is several wikipedia articles related to rare-earth mentioning circular economy, I think I'm oblidged to share more with readers on this topic. This artile looks to me is more like a thesis, though. While I'm translating the sentence "In the UK, Steve D. Parker researched waste as a resource in the UK agricultural sector in 1982, developing novel closed-loop production systems. These systems mimicked and worked with the biological ecosystems they exploited.", I couldn't find good reference to Steve D. Parker, can anybody help? Thanks.ThomasYehYeh (talk) 00:42, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:37, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Circular economy in the construction supply chain.png

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Systems Change Lab tracker of progress towards a circular economy in the "Towards the circular economy" section
For consideration: World Resources Institute and partners launched a new section of systemschangelab.org that tracks 34 targets around the shift towards a circular economy on April 2, 2024. https://systemschangelab.org/circular-economy Wondering if perhaps this could be added in the "Towards the circular economy" section? The Platform for a Circular Economy (PACE), which World Resources Institute is also a partner, is already included later on in this section. 73.196.102.10 (talk) 05:47, 4 April 2024 (UTC)