A Brief History of the Circular Economy: Definition, Examples + Different Interpretations

If you’re a professional or a student focusing on the environmental sector, you must have heard of the circular economy and its potential to reduce the environmental pressure of cities and economies.

In brief the circular economy proposes to reuse waste or output flows as new resources.

Since 2012-2015 it has taken the policy world by storm. Each major policy and action plan at a city, country or international level is now mentioning circular economy.

However, how did we get here and where did this concept originate from?

In this video I want to share a brief history of circular economy and provide you with some more nuance of what CE can mean once implemented. As you will see there as divergent point of views when it comes to its definition and different end goals are in mind.

What do you think ? What should the Circular Economy's end goal should be ?

Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:19 What is Circular Economy? A definition
03:40 Points everybody agrees on about the Circular Economy
07:20 A brief history of the Circular Economy (in policies)
12:40 Points of disagreement about the Circular Economy
17:37 Example of Circular Economy policies in Cities
19:40 What is the role of a Circular Economy ?

#circulareconomy #explained #history #model #definition

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[g.vraghunathreddy]

Thank you very much for presenting a good overview on the topic. Really interesting explanation.

[gauravk.s.]

Good lecture ! Applying principles of Carbon Sequestration as well as encompassing Geoengineering for change could alter the foundations!

[ThomasLorenz-dhiy]

As I see it, working towards a circular economy is an attempt to create a closed system. Making efforts toward this end is both appealing and necessary. However, as you mentioned, the Laws of Thermodynamics, more specifically the principle of entropy will prevent a linear economy from ever being fully bent into a closed loop. Nevertheless, there is a way that we can come close to reaching this goal. We could reduce our standard of living down to the point of living in the forests and on the savannahs as hunters and gatherers just as our ancestors did. We could live as beasts among other animals in the more circular economy called the eco-system. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed your video and appreciate your efforts in addressing this important concept.

[chiarabocchino]

Great video, as all the others! It would be interesting to explore urban/territorial projects that use urban metabolism analyses in order to improve the sustainability of the project itself. One example is Circular Buiksloterham in The Netherlands.
Anyway, bravissimi!

[rovingwaves]

Well done for the great summary ! Very useful !

[sebastianmoyersoen]

Thank you for the overview!
Could you share the reference to the study you mention at the end when comparing the policies of Brussels, Paris and London?
Cheers!

[FelipeOssio]

Thank you very much, excellent video and very enlightening.

[kwabenaBryan]

Amazing. than you so much. Can we get the links to these books?

[samaholden]

Fantastic summary of what is quite a complex topic. The degrowth perspective appeals to me because it does oppose this continual growth and competitive attitude we seem to have in the global economy and has led to things like the food system producing enough food to end food poverty and yet its not distributed fairly, it flows with the market, and extracts from populations and degrades landscapes for the coin etc

I am doing some reading into the repair movement as a potential avenue for tackling the consumer mentality, have you got any reccomended reading or resoucres I could look into?

[pierrelucsutter]

Je viens de découvrir ta chaîne YT. En parlant d'économie circulaire en ville, à tu déjà abordé la question de l'assainissement ? La nourriture est quand même le 1er des ''intrants'' de la ville, et les excréments une resource considérable à ''circularise'' dans le bassin d'approvisionnement des villes...

[FuseiniSalifu-egle]

Circular economy should rooted from waste