Economic and Social Implications of the Circular Economy

Circular Economy (CE) is the long-term economic model that guarantees environmental sustainability and resource efficiency. The main goal of the value shift from the existing model to the circular one is to achieve responsible consumption and production across different sectors. The changes regarding industrial processes, increasing reuse, repair, remanufacturing, and recycling will bring many business opportunities in the case of products, as well as certain shortcomings, such as changes in business models. CE represents a transformation from a linear value chain into “closed” loops, and as one of the primary expressions, it emphasizes cooperation among different industrial stakeholders, also sparing post-sales services. Rethinking patterns of production and consumption has become a critical priority to assure sustainable development, particularly for food, textiles, synthetic and chemical products, electrical and electronic equipment, and waste management, which together represent around two-thirds of solid waste in most countries. There are at least three claimants to regard several aspects of CE. From the economic point of view, teams of professionals try to redefine the existing economic model. One of the reasons to enrich the prism through this sector, even though a CE can have positive effects on aspects other than income, is that successful implementation relies strongly on management decisions made by trained economists. Also, different principles of CE are well known under the umbrella of integral ecology, which should be seen from the perspectives of economic, social, and environmental imperatives compatible with sustainable development. The third aspect embedded in the CE concept is the one related to the degree of economic development, as economic domains show some quantitative estimations, such as sustainability, economy, financing, consumer prices, industrial domain, transportation, waste, agriculture, fishery, food industry, tourism, and marketing. This list can be a reasonable basis for periodical multi-disciplinary empirical studies that should strive to improve the existing index, identify other essential variables, and validate the existing index by using different methods. In the first part of this study, the social and economic implications are discussed separately, regardless of the existing close relationships between them, among others.