engleski

Concept of Circular Economy: Critical Thinking

The concept of circular economy since recently has earned great attention of public, academic community, policy makers – not necessarily politicians and in certain amount, the business people and entrepreneurs. Circular economy represents new phrase used as replacement for rather warned out phrases such as green economy or sustainable development. It is presented as a solution to a problem of how to fulfil the needs of humanity. At the same time, this process of fulfilling needs should not damage already very fragile balance of the Earth's systems and at the same time reduce resource consumption to a level, which will allow next generations to at least enjoy some of it. In the explanation of the concept, we hear a lot about the idea, at the same time very little about the methods, processes and technologies, which should bring this idea into life. The most detailed information on the implementation of the concept can be found in the area of waste separation systems, primary selection, recycling and waste recovery, while the much more important role in the paradigm shift is being seriously neglected. It is the role of the primary producers where detailed information on how to implement the concept is missing, although it is the industry that is responsible for creation of production processes, material choices and thinking through the way of how the products are going to be used and disposed of. In the creation process, the producers actually decide on how product or service will be positions in the process of material circulation through economic flows and systems. Critical thinking on circular economy presented in this paper aims to stress that we are indeed talking about the approach to industrial production, which takes into account consumption avoidance and restrictions of resource usage or their replacement with reusable or renewable ones. This way we can support elimination of waste creation. Circular economy is the concept, which replaces dig – use - dispose concept still so common in our linear economy. It supports usage of renewable resources but also renewable energy and it focuses on redesign of products and services towards resource less intensive and less hazardous. To fully implement circular economy, we need the shift of the paradigm of how we create the process of product design, materials, production, consumption, business models and systems in place and to rethink the saving that implementation of this concept will bring to the producers. The paper also analyses public policies that arrange circular economy. It is aiming to point out that we are talking about the concept far more complex than the separate waste collection systems and recycling which are the methods that are most commonly used to describe circular economy. It is most common approach used in public policies not only in Croatia, but also in the European Commission’s documents and strategies. The paper discusses the current quality of the public policies and weather it is sufficient to push towards desired changes to circular economy and what are the shortcomings of the current systems if they exist.

circular economy, resource consumption, economy, business

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