Circular economy indicators in relation to eco-innovation in European regions

Abstract

The concept of a circular economy (CE) has become popular and important issue in environmental management in recent years; however, there are not particular indicators dedicated to it in regional policy. CE approach is an industrial system that is restorative by design, and it emphasises that it is important that, rather than extracting natural resources, the materials that have already been taken can and should be recovered and reused in different ways, thereby securing natural resources from over-exploitation. In order to meet CE assumptions, modern and innovative technologies that allow for the recovery of valuable materials should be developed. This also applies to eco-innovation that connects technology development with environmental aspects. It is therefore obvious that issues of CE and eco-innovation are linked, and a uniform methodology aimed at compare the levels of moving to CE including eco-innovation solutions should be established. Because the focus in European Union (EU) has been paid on regions, measuring of CE-eco-innovations levels is especially important at the regional level. In this paper, the proposals of CE indicators, based on eco-innovation factors, which can be possible to create based on existing data set (Eurostat, Cohesion policy) are presented. It is recommend to use of five group indicators for measuring regional CE-eco-innovation. Based on EcoInnovation Scoreboard which describes innovation measurement, three of proposed indicator groups are associated directly with innovations, taking into account the principles of CE: CE-eco-innovation inputs, CE-eco-innovation activities and CE-eco-innovation outputs, and other two groups of indicators are effects of the CE-eco-innovation introduction: resource efficiency outcomes and socio-economic outcomes. This way of measuring CE-eco-innovation allows for create holistic, systematic and integrated approach for the CE concept at the regional level. Proposed indicators can be used in current transition stage for assessment of implementation regional policy and as a base for creation final CE indicators.

Composite Index to Measure the Performance of Today’s Creative Cities: A Holistic Perspective

“…It is clearly necessary for towns to go down this route and thereby to improve their environmental performance even more. The importance of this model for the cities' improved sustainable performance was explained by Ligorio (2017) and by Smol et al (2017), despite the suggestion that the circular economy should be interlinked with ICT and open governance (intelligence, Neirotti et al 2014, Girard et al 2016). Neirotti et al (2014 also argue that cities with urban sustainability predict their performance positively and raise their residents' quality of life, and, in the case of Portugal, this dimension's weighting is very close to 0.40.…”

How to monitor environmental pressures of a circular economy: An assessment of indicators

“…Given the wide range of perspectives, formats, and scales, Saidani, Yannou, Leroy, Cluzel, and Kendall () suggest a taxonomy of different CE indicators. However, many reviews address specific aspects of CE, such as resource efficiency (Huysman et al., ), eco‐innovation (Smol, Kulczycka, & Avdiushchenko, ), or resource recovery from waste (Iacovidou et al., ). At the product and organizational levels, possible metrics are discussed by Tecchio et al.…”

“…Given the wide range of perspectives, formats, and scales, Saidani, Yannou, Leroy, Cluzel, and Kendall (2018) suggest a taxonomy of different CE indicators. However, many reviews address specific aspects of CE, such as resource efficiency (Huysman et al, 2015), eco-innovation (Smol, Kulczycka, & Avdiushchenko, 2017), or resource recovery from waste (Iacovidou et al, 2017). At the product and organizational levels, possible metrics are discussed by Tecchio et al (2017) and Pauliuk, EU policy suggests a monitoring framework focusing on waste (e.g., waste generation and food waste) and recycling (e.g., recycling rates [RRs], contribution of recycled materials to raw materials demand), complemented with more economic and socially oriented indicators (EC, 2018b).…”

Some Aspects of the Compatibility of Mineral Mining Technologies

“…In addition, the introduction of technology synthesis will increase: the completeness of mineral extraction, the ef ciency of mining, increase the return on assets of the enterprise. However, the use of combined technologies complicates the management of the enterprise, forcing them to invent ways to manage processes that will be able to solve mining problems (Gorova et al, 2012;Smol et al, 2017;Tjiparuro et al, 2018) and national security because national security has ecological, economic, informational and even humanitarian components (Fatkhutdinov, & Bazaluk, 2018). Accordingly, the effective use of additional technologies depends on a list of parameters such as exploration of the deposit, technological and technical parameters of extraction, expediency and the possibility of investment in the enterprise.…”