Conceptualizing the Circular Economy

Circular Economy policy landscape has been able to create a focus and expanded noticeably over the last two decades. The thought process around Circular Economy started in the 1970s. The use of the term “circular economy” introduced in early 2000. The EU, China, and India have been the global front-runners in this process. In Europe, 2011 was the starting point of discussion regarding Circular Economy with reference to the higher prices of commodities and the EU initiated its ambitious action plans for CE Implementation very recently in 2015. Subsequently its member states and European cities started adopting CE strategies. The Circular Economy Promotion Law was introduced by China in 2009. Subsequently in 2013, a number of policies and strategies supporting CE implementation and Extended Producer Responsibility in the year 2016 were introduced. Similarly, a number of legislation were established since the year 1974 based on resource conservation and environmental protection. Subsequently there was a slow change in the focus and ultimate in 2014 the Swachh Bharat Mission and in 2016 six waste management legislation were introduced based on 5R and Circular Economy. Several UN initiatives, namely, Paris 2015, being the latest, the UN Global Compact, the eight UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2000–2015, and now the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 all are supporting the CE concepts and implementation. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agendas are helpful to push Circular Economy policy in countries while scientific and technological advancement is a major area of concern to implementation of SDG 2030. Studies shows that significant gaps and scopes exist to bridge the scientific and technological divide between developed and developing countries. Experts from 13 countries discuss on various issues of implementation of Circular Economy in this book. This chapter will present glimpses of the findings of the experts in this book as well from the book, Circular Economy: Global Perspective. A comparative analysis of the legislative instruments in these 32 countries has also been presented in the study.