University Politehnica of Bucharest, Faculty of Entrepreneurship, Business Engineering and Management, Department of Economic Engineering, Splaiul Independentei, No. 313, S6, Bucharest RO-060042, Romania.
Sci Total Environ. 2020 May 20;718:137375. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137375. Epub 2020 Feb 17.
Sustainable development demands radical rethinking of national economies, now mainly based on a linear approach. The transition to a circular one requires crucial innovations and disruptive changes and, despite the interest about this topic, the circular economy is insufficiently implemented. This paper intents to demonstrate that circular economy is a manner of rearranging the economies on sustainable development economic, social and environmental requirements. The aim of this paper is to assess the readiness of the economies belonging to the European Union (EU) to migrate from the actual linear economy to a circular one through a methodology which incorporates economic, social and environmental factors and delivers a composite index. This index is based on a ready to use original unified framework, based on the three pillars of the sustainable development - economic, social and environmental, each founded on two relevant factors. The index is useful for the diagnosis of current situation and allows the identification of the best EU players in terms of readiness of EU nations to pass to a sustainable circular economy. The findings of this paper add value to the current knowledge on circular economy and portray the circularity as being grounded on a safe, rational and socially just transformation. The results of this paper provide a tool that may be used by national and European decision makers/regulators to identify the best/worst practices, which can be replicated/addressed in order to accelerate the transition of the EU to circularity.
可持续发展要求从根本上重新思考目前主要基于线性模式的国民经济。向循环经济的转变需要关键创新和颠覆性变革，尽管人们对这一主题很感兴趣，但循环经济的实施仍不充分。本文旨在表明，循环经济是一种根据可持续发展的经济、社会和环境要求重新安排经济的方式。本文的目的是通过一种综合经济、社会和环境因素的方法来评估属于欧盟（EU）的经济体通过从现行线性经济向循环经济过渡的准备情况，并提供一个综合指数。该指数基于一个现成的、统一的原始框架，该框架基于可持续发展的三个支柱——经济、社会和环境，每个支柱都建立在两个相关因素的基础上。该指数有助于对现状进行诊断，并确定欧盟国家在向可持续循环经济过渡方面的最佳参与者。本文的研究结果增加了关于循环经济的现有知识，并将循环性描绘为基于安全、理性和社会公正的转型。本文的研究结果提供了一个工具，国家和欧洲决策者/监管机构可以使用该工具来确定最佳/最差做法，以便在加速向循环经济过渡方面加以复制/处理。
