specific goals. Among them, the circular economy (CE) focuses on decoupling the
economic activity from resource depletion, providing an appealing concept for
companies to support the development of strategies benefitting from both saving
money and resources.
CE is still a not well-defined concept that heavily builds on past ones, as suggested in the CIRAIG’s white paper on circular economy released in 2015.
Nonetheless, a narrow scope definition of CE jeopardizes its contribution to the
bigger picture of a sustainable development. Without a clear identification of the
dimensions that define a CE, practitioners are willing to choose inadequate
assessment tools that account for only a small part of the complete CE model.
According to several definitions and metrics of CE, a company that consumes more
materials and less energy is less circular than the one that consumes fewer materials
and more energy [2]. This is due to an unclear definition of the boundaries between
of material circularity and burden shifting, and all the more, environmental benefits
are not quantitatively linked to circular strategies (i.e. circular economy loops) [3].
As the world faces a growing amount of complex products coming to their
end-of-life to manage as well as recycling efficiency challenges, recycling strategies
tend to consume more energy as the amount of recovered material rises [4, 5].
Besides, technological progress make sometimes the reusing a worse environmental
strategy [6], e.g. innovation on energetically efficient products leads reusing old
products less efficient to increase its overall environmental impacts. Hence, the need
for adequate quantifying tools for circular strategies—to enlighten decision makers
towards sustainable practices—is gaining increasing attention [7].
This paper attempts to provide an approach that allows identifying trade-offs
between increasing material circularity and decreasing environmental burdens to
assess CE strategies through a case study on tire end-of-life management. We first
identify suitable tools to assess both circularities of material flows and environmental burdens and we provide a novel approach to evaluate CE strategies (See
Chapter “Sustainability performance evaluation for selecting the Best Recycling
Pathway During its Design Phase”). We apply it to a case study on tire end-of-life
management to identify trade-offs of CE strategies (See Chapter “A synthesis of
optimization approaches for LCA-integrated industrial process modeling: application to potable water production plants”), we then discuss some limitations of our
approach (See in this Chapter). Finally, concluding remarks provide insights for
future works on CE assessment (See Chapter “Bio-based materials within the
circular economy: opportunities and challenges”).
34
G. Lonca et al.
economic activity from resource depletion, providing an appealing concept for
companies to support the development of strategies benefitting from both saving
money and resources.
CE is still a not well-defined concept that heavily builds on past ones, as suggested in the CIRAIG’s white paper on circular economy released in 2015.
Nonetheless, a narrow scope definition of CE jeopardizes its contribution to the
bigger picture of a sustainable development. Without a clear identification of the
dimensions that define a CE, practitioners are willing to choose inadequate
assessment tools that account for only a small part of the complete CE model.
According to several definitions and metrics of CE, a company that consumes more
materials and less energy is less circular than the one that consumes fewer materials
and more energy [2]. This is due to an unclear definition of the boundaries between
of material circularity and burden shifting, and all the more, environmental benefits
are not quantitatively linked to circular strategies (i.e. circular economy loops) [3].
As the world faces a growing amount of complex products coming to their
end-of-life to manage as well as recycling efficiency challenges, recycling strategies
tend to consume more energy as the amount of recovered material rises [4, 5].
Besides, technological progress make sometimes the reusing a worse environmental
strategy [6], e.g. innovation on energetically efficient products leads reusing old
products less efficient to increase its overall environmental impacts. Hence, the need
for adequate quantifying tools for circular strategies—to enlighten decision makers
towards sustainable practices—is gaining increasing attention [7].
This paper attempts to provide an approach that allows identifying trade-offs
between increasing material circularity and decreasing environmental burdens to
assess CE strategies through a case study on tire end-of-life management. We first
identify suitable tools to assess both circularities of material flows and environmental burdens and we provide a novel approach to evaluate CE strategies (See
Chapter “Sustainability performance evaluation for selecting the Best Recycling
Pathway During its Design Phase”). We apply it to a case study on tire end-of-life
management to identify trade-offs of CE strategies (See Chapter “A synthesis of
optimization approaches for LCA-integrated industrial process modeling: application to potable water production plants”), we then discuss some limitations of our
approach (See in this Chapter). Finally, concluding remarks provide insights for
future works on CE assessment (See Chapter “Bio-based materials within the
circular economy: opportunities and challenges”).
34
G. Lonca et al.