Construction and demolition waste (CDW) accounts for 30% to 40% of the total amount of waste in China. CDW is usually randomly dumped or disposed in landfills and the average recycling rate of CDW in China is only about 5%. Considering there is big challenge in adoption of circular economy in CDW industry in China while related research is still limited, we conduct the CDW management analysis through 3R principle. Existing policies and management situations were investigated and analyzed based on the reduction, reuse and recycle principles. Results reveal that primary barriers of reducing CDW in China include lack of building design standard for reducing CDW, low cost for CDW disposal and inappropriate urban planning. Barriers to reuse CDW include lack of guidance for effective CDW collection and sorting, lack of knowledge and standard for reused CDW, and an underdeveloped market for reused CDW. As for recycling of CDW, key challenges are identified as ineffective management system, immature recycling technology, underdeveloped market for recycled CDW products and immature recycling market operation. Proposals to improve the current situation based on 3R principle are also proposed, including designing effective circular economy model, reinforcing the source control of CDW, adopting innovative technologies and market

The idea of a circular economy (CE) has become prominent in both European and Chinese policy making. Chinese and European perspectives on a CE share a common conceptual basis and exhibit many similar concerns in seeking to enhance resource efficiency. Yet they also differ, and this article explores differences in the focus of CE policy in China and Europe. We present evidence on the differing understandings of the CE concept in Chinese and European policy discourse, drawing on qualitative and quantitative analysis of policy documents, media articles, and academic publications. We show that the Chinese perspective on the CE is broad, incorporating pollution and other issues alongside waste and resource concerns, and it is framed as a response to the environmental challenges created by rapid growth and industrialization. In contrast, Europe's conception of the CE has a narrower environmental scope, focusing more narrowly on waste and resources and opportunities for business. We then examine similarities and differences in the focus of policy activity in the two regions and in the indicators used to measure progress. We show differences in the treatment of issues of scale and place and different priorities across value chains (from design to manufacture, consumption, and waste management). We suggest some reasons for the divergent policy articulation of the CE concept and suggest lessons that each region can learn from the other. Keywords:China circular economy environmental governance European Union indicator industrial ecology Supporting information is linked to this article on the JIE website IntroductionChina and Europe face a number of structural economic challenges. Growth rates remain lower than expected in both regions, whereas environmental and social challenges demand attention. The linear model of production-based on a take, make, and dispose approach, which relies on imports of virgin natural resources and disposal of wastes and emissions-appears Conflict of interest statement: The authors have no conflict to declare.

Last years have seen a surge of Industrial Symbiosis (IS) development in association with ad-hoc widespread policies to encourage more circular and sustainable practices in the manufacturing sector. Developments in Europe, despite having attracted less attention in the literature, have been significant, driven both by public and private initiative. This paper provides an updated overview of IS activity in Europe, with a mapping of key networks, and a study of prevailing typologies of networks, size, geographical distribution and main streams/ resources traded. The analysis is based on a combination of desk research, gathering of primary data from case studies, a survey to IS network facilitators (n=22) and in-depth interviews and focus groups (3) with IS practitioners, policy officers and industry representatives (n=25). The analysis identified pockets of IS activity across all Europe, although varying in nature, resources exchanged and scale and scope of the initiatives. The average size of the mapped networks is approx. 473 members, but the median is approx. 100 members, which indicates high variability of sizes. The geographical scope of the synergies also seems to be dependent upon the following factors: 1) the type of waste stream/by-product; 2) transport costs and 3) market value of secondary materials. Types of waste streams exchanged common to most networks, are chemicals (e.g. chemical base products), biomass and agriculture by-products, wood and wood pellets, plastics, reusable construction materials, equipment, inert waste and water (different qualities including industrial water), residual heat and steam. The paper also discusses key obstacles facing IS development in Europe highlighting: 1) weakness of economic incentives given the low margin of IS projects associated to undeveloped secondary markets; 2) geographical variation of incentives and drivers, given differences in policy frameworks and support mechanisms (e.g. landfill tax levels) and 3) legislative issues that make transport over geographic boundaries extremely complex and administratively burdensome. Finally, the paper concludes with a general discussion of the potential of IS to contribute to the transition to the circular economy (CE) in Europe and identifies some key areas of future research.

The wide adoption of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles (EVs) will require increased natural resources for the automotive industry. The expected rapid increase in batteries could result in new resource challenges and supply chain risks. To strengthen the resilience and sustainability of automotive supply chains and reduce primary resource requirements, circular economy strategies are needed. Here we illustrate how these strategies can reduce primary raw material extraction i.e. cobalt supplies. Material flow analysis is applied to understand current and future flows of cobalt embedded in EVs batteries across the European Union. A reference scenario is presented and compared with four strategies: technology driven substitution and technology driven reduction of cobalt, new business models to stimulate battery reuse/recycling and policy driven strategy to increase recycling. We find that new technologies provide the most promising strategies to reduce the reliance on cobalt significantly but could result in burden shifting such as an increase in nickel demand. To avoid the latter, technological developments should therefore be combined with an efficient recycling system. We conclude that more ambitious circular economy strategies, at both government and business levels, are urgently needed to address current and future resource challenges across the supply chain successfully.

Debate around increasing demand for natural resources is often framed in terms of a "nexus" and perhaps at risk of becoming a buzz word. A nexus between what, at what scales, and what would be the consequences? This article analyses why readers should care about the nexus concept towards the SDGs. We discuss a five-nodes definition and propose perspectives that may lead to a reload of climate policy with buy-in from supply chain managers and resourcerich developing countries. Our research perspectives address modelling approaches and scenarios at the interface of bio-physical inputs with the human dimensions of security and governance.

PUBLIC HEALTH 'Stolen colon' Twitter storm gave big boost to cancer awareness p.161 PUBLISHING Chinese authors should register unique IDs to increase visibility p.161 MILITARY SCIENCE Government dreams of death rays drove laser science p.158 A worker checks polyester fibres made from waste plastic bottles in Binzhou, China.

In this article, we analyse the evolution of circular economy (CE) scientific knowledge in the most productive political geographies in the field, namely the European Union (EU) 28 and China by using bibliometric, network and survey analysis. Our objective is to provide a systemic, quantitative, visio-temporal review of the evolution of the CE scientific research field. Using Web of Science (WoS) database and Scopus, we trace the bibliometric characteristics of key research terms, their co-occurrences, publication (co)authorships at multi-level (author, institute, city, region, country), issue journals, literature citations and funding sources. Our findings from co-authorship, citation, co-citation, bibliometric coupling, co-occurrence and network analyses indicate that China and the EU have the highest amount of CE literature published and are each other's primary source of co-authorship. Emerging or reiterated main themes in the joint CE literature between EU and China are emergy analysis, indicators; resource efficiency, food waste, zero waste; eco-cities, lifestyle and governance. There appears a good potential for international cooperation in the sectoral fields of automotive, construction and demolition, critical raw materials; in business, (new) business models, product and services platforms, and from security perspective, resource security, security of supply, given the paucity of co-authorship between China and the EU under these themes. In China; Beijing, Shenyang, Dalian, Shanghai are the most active cities with a central role of Chinese Academy of Sciences at institution level of analysis. The most active EU institute is the Delft University of Technology in South Holland, the Netherlands. In Europe, we observe countries citing CE literature yet with no or few publications. Journal of Cleaner Production is the most important outlet for publications on CE and also for joint publications of CE researchers in both China and EU-28. We conclude our article with future research agendas, and a positive note on existing interests in international cooperation based on our survey participated by highly-cited CE authors.

A B S T R A C TTantalum, considered one of the critical elements by many countries, is a widely used metal in industries such as electronics, aerospace and automotive. The tantalum market has experienced several disruptions and subsequent price swings in the past, implying problems with its supply chain resilience and stability. In this study, we trace the entire value chain of the tantalum industry from mining to the intermediate and the downstream industries. Our interest is to see how dependent the tantalum supply chain is on specific countries and regions, how exposed primary production is to disruptions, and what mechanism counteracts disruption. This study assesses the tantalum supply chain from a resilience perspective rather than an investigation of any specific disruption in the system. We analyze several resilience-promoting mechanisms such as: (a) diversity of supply, (b) material substitution, (c) recycling and (d) stockpiling. We evaluate each of these mechanisms, and find that even though diversity of supply and stockpiling mechanisms have been decreasing for years, the tantalum supply chain has been flexible in its response to disruption. We find a much larger supply from unaccounted artisanal and small mining sources than expected based on official statistics, and estimate the unaccounted production in Africa, which shows an almost 250 percent increase from around 600 tons in 2004 to more than 2000 tons in 2014.. Besides flexible primary production from small-scale mining, we identfy rapid material substitution and increasing availability of waste and scrap as the main reasons behind the observed supply chain resilience.