2.3 Circular Economy 15
15
economic sector or even for a national economy (United Nations Environment
Program 2011).
Impact decoupling means to reduce negative environmental impact whileincreasing or maintaining the economic output. In this sense all impacts are im-
portant whether they occur during resource extraction, production, use phase or
post-consumption phase. Lifecycle Analysis (LCA) is an adequate tool to estimate
the impact. However, on a higher level such as within the national economy or
within the economic sector LCA is very difficult to use due to the variety of influ-
encing factors (United Nations Environment Program 2011). Impact decoupling
is especially important to avoid overstressing central eco systems such as climate,
land, ocean and water reservoirs.
This leads to the conclusion that it is not important to entirely stop growth butto change the way that the economy is growing. By decoupling economic growth
from resource consumption economic growth can be further maintained while
ensuring sustainable development. The objective has to be to minimize the con-
sumption of resources and the impact on the environment as well as to use human
capacity to create sustainable ways of life with the almost infinite solar energy as
a source of production and life.
2.3 Circular Economy
2.3 Circular Economy
The circular economy concept emerged as a prominent policy goal on several
political and business agendas during the late 1970s as a result of climatic changes
and the fear of rising resource prices (Gregson et al. 2015; European Commission
2014). First, a definition of the concept of circular economy is provided. Therefore,
this chapter aims to delimit circular economy from other prominent or emerging
concepts in the area of environmental protection as well as from the post-growth
movement. The benefits of circular economy as described in the literature reviewed
are presented later in this chapter. Lastly, a conceptual framework structuring po-
tential circular economy business models is developed. This framework is employed
when undertaking the case study analysis later in this thesis.