Analysis of Economic and Environmental Welfare in the Context of Circular Economy

Abstract

The concept of circular economy is alternative to linear economy, which places sustainability in the center of the interest. The circular economy focuses on environmental, resource efficiency, “no waste” approach, social factors and promotes the co-existing of healthy economy together with environmental health. The purpose of the article is to propose a concept of economic and environmental welfare in the context of circular economy, apply and provide empirical evidence based on economic data of Baltic Sea Region countries. The article includes the observation of environmental aspect and resource efficiency in Baltic Sea Region including green energy, renewable resources, waste management, economic indicators, as well as literature analysis and quantitative analysis. A multi-criteria decision analysis method TOPSIS was used to compare the set of indicators by identifying weights for each criterion. TOPSIS is quite useful method to rank and make selection of a number of indicators. By the result, the Baltic Sea Region countries are scored by the economic and environmental welfare in the context of circular economy.

Evaluation Indicators of Green Economic Development: The Case of the Baltic Countries

“…Such an example of green economy research can be used, but in order to accurately assess the development trends of the green economy, it is necessary to evaluate the green economy from a broader perspective. Stankevičienė and Nikanorova (2017) analysed economic and ecological well-being in the context of the circular economy. The researchers chose indicators that also reflect the ideas of the green economy: municipal waste recycling rate (%), e-waste recycling rate (%), amount of landfills excluding basic mineral waste (%), eco-innovation index, share of renewable energy% from final energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions from energy consumption, share of renewable energy in transport fuel consumption, environmental tax revenue, energy taxes per GDP, energy consumption per GDP, energy production per GDP, renewable energy consumption per GDP, renewable energy production per GDP, value added of non-financial business economy, energy efficiency, resource efficiency, electricity produced from renewable sources, renewable energy consumption, energy production, renewable energy production.…”

“…Such an extensive list of indicators can provide an opportunity to analyse in detail the development of the green economy. Taking into account the indicators analysed by Stankevičienė and Nikanorova (2017), it can be noticed that they can be supplemented with social, technological and political factors.…”

“…It is therefore possible to discuss the issue, which has not been addressed byhow to identify the indicators that describe the development of a green economy. In the past, multiple scientific community researchers have analysed green economy development with inclusion of multiple different indicator, of which majority includes the problemlack of consistent data (Law, De Lacy, Lipman, & Jiang [2016], Kunapatarawong and Martinez-Ros [2016], Sonnenschein and Mundaca [2015], Stankevičienė and Nikanorova [2017], Moyo [2014], Weber and Cabras [2017]). Other scientific scholars mostly use secondary data to assess green economy in certain regions (Islam, Siwar, Ludin, Chowdhury, Ibrahim, 2012).…”